m* 










i 










mm 



>fc* 



mm 




3k& 



q&'t, 



I 



THE BEDELL LECTURES 



BEDELL LECTURES on the Evidences 
of Religion. 

I. The World's Testimony to Jesus Christ ; 
or, The Power of Christianity in Developing 
Modern Civilization. By the Rt. Rev. John 
Williams, D.D., Bishop of Connecticut. 8vo, cloth 
extra ....... $1.00 

" Contains more than can often be found in ten 
times the space . . . An historical argument, 
so clear and so powerful that nothing beyond the 
stating of it is needed." — The Churchman. 

"The argument is massive and simple." — Stand- 
ard of the Cross. 

II. Revealed Religion Expounded by its 
Relations to the Moral Being of God. By 
the Rt. Rev. Henry Cotterill, D.D., Bishop of 
Edinburgh. 8vo, cloth extra . . . $1.00 

"Dr. Cotterill is a profound theologian, a ripe 
scholar, and an eminent preacher. His lecture con- 
denses the highest results of ancient and modern 
thought on the subject, .and is the best argument 
possible against the spirit of unbelief which is so 
rapidly spreading over the Christian world." — Com- 
mercial Advertiser. 

III. The World and the Logos. By the Rt. 
Rev. Hugh Miller Thompson, D.D., Asst. Bishop 
of Mississippi. 8vo, cloth . . . $1.00 

''As a superb piece of dialectic, as a capital ex- 
ample of good fighting, this little book will be a 
real enjoyment." — The Churchman. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, New York. 



THE BEDELL LECTURES, i 



THE 



Religious Aspect 



EVOLUTION 



BY 



JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D. 

PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON COLLEGE 

Author of " Method of Divine Government " ; " Intuitions of the Mind 
" Realistic Philosophy " ; " Psychology — the Cognitive Powers " 
" Psychology — the Motive Powers," etc. 



O" 



MAR 
3S6f 



Or 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 

P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
Sfrc Knickerbocker fjress 
1888 



/ 



mi 



COPYRIGHT BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 









Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York 



EXTRACTS 

From the communication of the donors to the 
Board of Trustees of the Theological Semi- 
nary of the Diocese of Ohio and Kenyon Col- 
lege. 

Cleveland, June 21, 1880. 
Gentlemen: 

We have consecrated and set apart for the service 
of God the sum of $5,000, to be devoted to the estab- 
lishment of a lecture or lectures in the Institutions 
at Gambier on the Evidences of Natural and Re- 
vealed Religion; or the Relations of Science and 
Religion. 

We ask permission of the Trustees to establish the 
lecture immediately, with the following provisions: 

The lecture or lectures shall be delivered bien- 
nially on Founders' Day (if such a day shall be 
established), or other appropriate time. During our 
lifetime, or the lifetime of either of us, the nomination 
of the lectureship shall rest with us. 

The interest for two years on the fund, less the sum 
necessary to pay for the publication, shall be paid to 
the Lecturer. 

The Lecturer shall also have one half of the net 
profits of the publication during the first two years 
after the date of publication. All other profits shall 



VI EXTRACTS. 

be the property of the Board, and shall be added to 
the capital of the lectureship. 

We express our preference that the lecture or 
lectures shall be delivered in the Church of the 
Holy Spirit, if such building be in existence; and shall 
be delivered in the presence of all the members of 
the Institutions under the authority of the Board. 

We ask that the day on which the lecture or the 
first of each series of lectures shall be delivered, shall 
be declared a holiday. 

We wish that the nomination to this lectureship 
shall be restricted by no other consideration than the 
ability of the appointee to discharge the duty to the 
highest glory of God in the completest presentation 
of the subject. We desire that the lectures shall be 
published in uniform shape, and that a copy of each 
shall be placed in the libraries of Bexley Hall, Ken- 
yon College and of the Philomethesian and the Nu 
Pi Kappa Society. Asking the favorable consider- 
ation of the Board of Trustees, 

We remain with great respect, 

G. T. Bedell, 
Julia Bedell. 

The Board accepted the gift, approved the 
terms, named All Saints' Day, November the 
first, as Founders' Day, and made it a holi- 
day. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The State of the Question . i 

II. — The Organic History 28 

III. — Powers Modifying Evolution . . .47 
IV. — Beneficence in the Method of Evo- 
lution . . . .58 

V. — Geology and Scripture . . . .69 
VI.— The Age of Man 77 



PREFACE. 



In my first published work, " The Method 
of Divine Government," I sought to unfold the 
plan by which God governs the world, and I 
found it to be in an orderly manner — that is, 
by law. As having pursued this line of re- 
search, I was prepared to believe that there 
might be the like method in the organic king- 
doms, and to listen to Darwin when he showed 
that there was a regular instrumentality in the 
descent of plants and animals. I noticed that 
he and others, such as Lewes, Huxley, and 
Spencer, who took the same view, were not 
swayed by any religious considerations, and 
that religious people generally were strongly 
prepossessed against the new doctrine. But I 
saw, at the same time, that Darwin was a most 
careful observer, that he published many im- 
portant facts, that there was great truth in the 
theory, and that there was nothing atheistic in 
it if properly understood — that is, in the ac- 



X PREFACE. 

knowledged tenet of the government of or- 
ganic nature by means and according to law. 

I felt it to be my only course not to reject 
the truth because it was proclaimed by some 
who turned it to an irreligious use, but to ac- 
cept it wherever it might lead, and to turn it 
to a better use. I let it be known that while 
I thought there was truth, I believed there 
was error in the common expositions of evo- 
lution, and that the work of the coming age 
must be to separate the truth from the error, 
when it would be found, I was sure, that this, 
like every other part of God's work, would 
illustrate his existence and his wisdom. 

When I was called from the Old World to 
the office which I now hold as president of an 
important college, I had to consider — I re- 
member seriously pondering the question in 
the vessel which brought me to this country — 
whether I should at once avow my convictions 
or keep them in abeyance because of the preju- 
dices of religious men, and lest I might un- 
settle the faith of the students committed to 
my care. I decided to pursue the open and 
honest course, as being sure that it would be the 
best in the end. I was not a week in Prince- 
ton till I let it be known to the upper classes 



PREFACE. XI 

of the college that I was in favor of evolution 
properly limited and explained ; and I have 
proclaimed my views in lectures and papers in 
a number of cities and before various associa- 
tions, literary and religious. I have been 
gratified to find that none of the churches has 
assailed me, and this has convinced me that 
their doubts about evolution have proceeded 
mainly from the bad use to which the doctrine 
has been turned. I am pleased to discover 
that intelligent Christians are coming round 
gradually to the views which I have had the 
courage to publish. 

I have all along had a sensitive apprehension 
that the undiscriminating denunciation of evo- 
lution from so many pulpits, periodicals, and 
seminaries might drive some of our thought- 
ful young men to infidelity, as they clearly 
saw development everywhere in nature, and 
were at the same time told by their advisers 
that they could not believe in evolution and 
yet be Christians. I am gratified beyond 
measure to find that I am thanked by my 
pupils, some of whom have reached the high- 
est position as naturalists, because in showing 
them evolution in the works of God, I showed 
them that this was not inconsistent with reli- 



XI 1 PREFACE. 

gion, and thus enabled them to follow science 
and yet retain their faith in the Bible. 1 

1 As I am a mere amateur naturalist (at one time a very enthusi- 
astic one) I have laid these papers before my former pupils, now emi- 
nent naturalists, Dr. Macloskie, Professor of Natural History, and 
Dr. Scott, Professor of Geology, in Princeton College, and accepted 
their corrections. I have made use of the able works of Dana, 
LeConte, and Geikie on geology ; also of Dawson's " Story of the 
Earth and Man," of Cope's " Origin of the Fittest," and especially of 
Conn's excellent work, " Evolution of To-Day." 



CHAPTER I. 

' THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 
I. 

Evolution and Causation. — Evolution, 
the drawing of one thing out of another, is 
deep in nature. It proceeds from causation, 
which is universal. In the world things are so 
connected that every one thing proceeds from 
some other, and all things from God. This 
arises from the universal action of causation. 
A cause (in physical nature) develops into an 
effect, and an effect is an evolution from a 
cause. The All-Mighty God, in all his works, 
might have acted immediately — that is, with- 
out any creature instrumentality. He might 
have produced crops and cattle, heaved up 
mountains and lowered plains, determined 
birth and death without the use of means of 
any kind. But in this case I do not see how 
mankind, with their present faculties, could 
have anticipated any of these occurrences, as 
it is only by the preparations for them that we 



2 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

know that they are coming. God has been 
pleased to arrange instead that every physical 
event has a physical cause, — the only exception 
being the miracles of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, which serve their purpose because they 
are exceptions. Causation is universal in 
physical nature, and causation develops all 
we see, or, to express it otherwise, all that we 
see is evolved from causes. We shall see that 
the evolution of plants and animals is pro- 
duced by organized causes. 

II. 
Nature of Causation. — I do not mean to 
enter into the deep discussions on this subject. 
We know a little more of causation in these 
later years. All natural causation is produced 
by two or more bodies acting on each other, 
the effect being that both are changed. A 
ball in motion strikes a ball at rest ; this con- 
stitutes the cause, and the effect is that the 
ball in motion is stayed, and the ball at rest 
moves, the two constituting the effect. It 
has to be added that heat is produced by 
the impact, being part of the effect. A 
stone strikes a board ; this is the cause, and 
the effect is the stone arrested in its course 
and the board broken. Cold air blows on a 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 3 

living plant ; this is the cause, and the effect 
is the temperature of the air insensibly 
affected and the plant killed. Causes always 
consist of two or more agents called con- 
causes ; effects consist of the same agents 
changed. The effects, which are also dual or 
plural, are ready with other agents to act as 
causes. Nature thus becomes reticulated and 
flexible. The evolution of living beings is an 
organized causation. 

III. 
Development in Nature. — Suppose that 
nature, as created by God at the beginning, 
consists of a hundred or a thousand agents. 
These act upon each other according to their 
properties, and new products are ever appear- 
ing. There can be no impropriety in saying 
that they are evolved from their antecedents, 
which have the power of developing them. A 
complex effect is the evolution of a complexity 
of causes — say the downfall of the Roman 
empire, or the Renaissance of the fifteenth 
century. Such is God's method of distribu- 
ting causes throughout the cosmos. It is our 
business not to rebel against the plan, but to 
fall in with it and profit by it. We can so far 
see its beneficial tendency. Looking to the 



4 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

causes operating, we can from the present so 
far find out the past and forecast the future. 
We can take advantage of these causes and 
combinations of causes to develop the results, 
general and special, which we wish to accom- 
plish. Limited though our view be, we can 
see that the method is worthy of God, and 
suited to the intelligence of man. We sow in 
spring because we know that the seed will 
produce fruit in harvest. 

We are all familiar with organic develop- 
ment, though we may not have been giving it 
this formidable name. We are privileged to 
be descended from parents. Of mature age, I 
know that I am developed from the boy of six 
as I remember him going to school. Our 
horses, our cattle, and dogs are of a breed 
which can be determined. The bread we eat 
sprang from seed. We do not complain of 
these evolutions ; we do not denounce them 
as atheistic. We are grateful for some of 
them ; as, for example, that we have been 
nursed by a mother's love and watched over 
by a father's care. The new evolutions of 
plants and animal races which we are now 
called to consider, may only be a farther evo- 
lution of the old ones. Possibly the one set 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 5 

may be no more atheistic than the others. 
Both may be illustrations of Divine method, 
of which we can so far see the wisdom. 

IV. 

The Question between Evolutionists 
and Non-Evolutionists. — " No man can find 
out the work that God maketh from the begin- 
ning to the end." But though human science 
cannot go back to the beginning nor go on to 
the end, and while there is much in the middle 
that is concealed, there are whole provinces 
which we can inquire into and come to know. 
"We know in part." We now know not a 
little about the generation of our earth, and of 
the plants and animals upon its surface. And 
we can tell much about the order in which 
animated beings appeared. But there is a 
keen dispute as to how they were produced. 

All admit that there is system in the produc- 
tion of the organic world. Those who have no 
faith in a power above nature, ascribe it to 
physical forces. Religious people, so far from 
denying this, should at once admit and pro- 
claim it ; and seek to find out what the forces 
are and the laws they follow. We cannot 
allow God to be separated from his works, and 
so we must resolutely hold that God is in the 



6 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

forces arranged into an order — that is, laws, 
which we find it so interesting to observe. 

But this is not just the burning question of 
the day. There is a perplexing confusion in 
the statement of the question. It has been 
misunderstood by religious, it has been per- 
verted by irreligious, people. The former 
often speak of it as being : Whether all things 
are to be ascribed to God, or a portion to 
God, while the rest is handed over to material 
agency ? In maintaining this latter view they 
furnish an excuse or pretext to those who 
would ascribe the descent of plants and ani- 
mals to mechanical agency. The great body 
of naturalists, all younger than forty, certainly 
all younger than thirty, are sure that they see 
evolution in nature ; but they are assured by 
their teachers or the religious press that, if 
evolution does every thing, there is nothing 
left for God to do, and they see no proof of 
his existence. Many a youth is brought to a 
crisis in his belief and life by such a represen- 
tation. He feels that he must give up either 
his science or his faith, and his head is dis- 
tracted, and his heart is tortured till feelings 
more bitter than tears are wrung from it. 

The question is said to be, Whether the 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. *] 

origin of species and descent of living creatures 
are by supernatural power or natural law, by 
Creator or creative action, by design or by 
mechanism, by contrivance or by chance, by 
purpose or without purpose. 

Mr. Darwin, followed by Dr. Romanes, and 
many others, is constantly drawing the dis- 
tinction in this form : between " natural selec- 
tion " and " supernatural design," between 
"natural law" and " special creation." Now 
the difference between the two opposing theo- 
ries as thus put is misleading, and this whether 
put by disbelief or by belief. The supernatural 
power is to be recognized in the natural law. 
The Creator's power is executed by creature 
action. The design is seen in the mechanism. 
Chance is obliged to vanish because we see 
contrivance. There is purpose when we see 
a beneficent end accomplished. Supernatural 
design produces natural selection. Special 
creation is included in universal creation. 

A question is often settled by being properly 
stated. The status qucestionis, as the scholas- 
tics expressed it, is here not between God and 
not-God, but between God working without 
means and by means, the means being created 
by God and working for him. There may be 



8 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

evidence of design, of contrivance, and purpose 
in the very means employed. If an optician 
brings me a microscope I have only to examine 
it to discover design in it, but I may have as 
clear proof of purpose when I visit his shop 
and see him manufacturing the instrument. 
There is nothing atheistic in the creed that 
God proceeds by instruments, which we may 
find to be for the good of his creatures. There 
may be a want of reverence toward God and 
truth when there is evidence laid before us in 
its favor and we refuse to look at it. I should 
discover God in the human frame, on the sup- 
position that he created it at once, but I have 
quite as satisfactory evidence on the supposi- 
tion that he produced it by a father and mother, 
and provided that it should grow to maturity 
by a natural process. In the geological de- 
velopment I am privileged as it were to enter 
God's workshop and see his modes of opera- 
tion, and the result reached so full of provisions 
in bones, muscles, joints, for the good of the 
creature. 

V. 

Tendency of a Set of Causes to Differ- 
entiate and Integrate. — Our cosmic system 
consists of a number of elements, supposed at 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. g 

present to be seventy, and of the properties 
possessed by them, such as gravitating, me- 
chanical, and chemical power ; these with an 
order or collocation imposed on them by God 
at the beginning. As they begin to act, which 
they do by their very nature as imparted to 
them by God, they differentiate. Things con- 
joined separate, complexities being dissolved 
by some of the composites having greater affin- 
ities to other things. There commence at the 
same time integrations ; and new combina- 
tions are formed by gravitation, by chemical 
affinity, and other powers. These two pro- 
cesses are continually going on. At last, how- 
ever, many integrations become fixed, so that 
they never change. Some have supposed that 
carbon is not an element, but a compound 
which cannot be dissolved in ordinary circum- 
stances. Thus sea and land are distributed, 
mountains and rocks are formed, lakes and 
rivers are spread out. If organisms are ruled, 
as they undoubtedly are, by the law of cause 
and effect, there must be a like variation and 
conservation in their actions. 

VI. 
Uniformity with Variations in Organ- 
isms. — Plants and animals are the result of 



IO THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

combinations, being composed of oxygen, hy- 
drogen, carbon, and nitrogen, the elements 
which form the most stable combinations, with 
a few others not so universally present. These 
are made, always by the power of God, to dif- 
ferentiate and combine into divisions, which 
are appropriately called Kinds. There are 
classes which are entitled to be called Natural; 
such, for example, is the division into fishes, 
amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The 
resemblance in the objects in the Kind is pro- 
duced by their being of the same composition, 
but mainly from their being descended from a 
seed or germ which is a concentrated combina- 
tion of powers. While there is a sameness 
there is also a variation. This may be pro- 
duced by the mutual action of the elements 
within the organism itself. It is thus, for ex- 
ample, that old age and death are brought 
upon living beings. But the most conspicuous 
agent is what is called Environment. Every 
object has surroundings which act upon it. A 
fertile soil makes a plant grow and expand, 
while a barren soil dwarfs it. 

VII. 

Classification by Ramification. — The clas- 
sification of organisms is not now made as it 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. II 

used to be — by concentric circles within circles, 
genera within orders, and species within gen- 
era — but rather by ramification, with trunk and 
branches, branchlets, twigs, and leaves. So in 
the vegetable and animal systems we have com- 
mon stock, and proceeding from it sub-kingdoms, 

CLASSES, FAMILIES, ORDERS, GENERA, and SPECIES. 

This is the common division now of the vegeta- 
ble and animal kingdoms. It shows us one sys- 
tem with means to produce it. Since the days 
of Aristotle, plants and animals have been clas- 
sified according to type. It is thus that the 
great Cuvier has arranged the animal king- 
dom. The types have been fondly contem- 
plated and admired by our profounder minds. 
They have been identified with the grand Ideas 
which, according to Plato, have been in or be- 
fore the Divine mind from all eternity. Pious 
minds in modern times have ascribed them to 
God, whose thoughts are embodied in them. 
On the other hand the great rival of Cuvier, 
St. Hilaire, ascribed the types to a common 
descent, and used language which sounded as 
if the animal, by its wishes, could add to its 
organs ; could call forth fins to swim with, and 
wings to fly. The controversy came to a head 
in 1830, when Goethe declared that it was of 



12 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

more importance than the French Revolution, 
which was at that time ringing in the ears of 
Europe. There is undoubtedly a difference 
between the two views ; but may there not be 
a reconciliation ? It may be by descent that 
types are formed, and yet all be done by a plan 
in the Divine wisdom which is thus manifested. 
The two great Swiss-American naturalists, 
Agassiz and Guyot, delighted to perceive 
clearly that there was a system in the descent 
of animals which they were sure was conceived 
in the Divine mind, but doubted whether it 
could have been produced by natural law or 
material agency. But surely, in analogy with 
the Divine procedure in all other parts of na- 
ture, we may discover a Divine plan, and at 
the same time a creature agency to carry it 
out, which agency makes known God's plan to 
us. We may see that the relations which con- 
stitute types are genetic, and as we perceive in 
them wisdom and beauty, we can also perceive 
that they are instituted by God. This view 
gives to classes a connection in the very nature 
of things, and makes species intelligible to hu- 
man intelligence, which thereby rises to some 
comprehension of Divine intelligence, in the 
image of which human intelligence is formed. 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 1 3 

VIII. 

Continuance and Disappearance of Spe- 
cies. — In some cases the genera and species of 
plants and animals are unchanged for thou- 
sands or even millions of years. As instances 
we may mention the Trilobites, which appear in 
the Cambrian and remain till the Carbonifer- 
ous epoch, when they disappear. The small 
bivalve shell, the Lingula, and the Nautilus 
can be traced back unchanged to the earliest 
animal ages. So can some of the earthworms 
which have been busy in forming a soil for us. 
We may point also to the Ferns which present 
themselves in the Old Red Sandstone and the 
Coal Measures, and adorn our fields and up- 
lands at this day. The fossil scorpions, found 
in Scotland and Gothland, are the same as 
those of our day. As illustrations of a differ- 
ent kind of the same continuance, we may re- 
fer to the figures of negroes on the monuments 
of Egypt, identical with the forms of the same 
race at the present day. Mr. Carruthers tells 
us that the leaves of grape vines found in the 
Egyptian tombs are identical with those of our 
time. We may also mention the Chinese, the 
same in the color of their skin, their language, 
tastes, and habits since they first appeared in 



1 4 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

history. All this is easily accounted for. The 
animated beings have lived in scenes in which 
they have not been disturbed by their sur- 
roundings. 

In other cases the plants and animals have 
undergone a series of changes. We may illus- 
trate this by the history of the horse tribe. The 
earliest form is found in the Eocene rocks, 
where it treads the often soft ground with five 
toes, the typical number. Next it appears 
with three toes on the hind foot, and four per- 
fect serviceable toes on the fore foot, with im- 
perfect splint bones in the fore foot, and ap- 
parently a dew-claw on the hind foot. It is 
then about the size of a fox. Next comes 
the Orohippus, with the dew-claw dropped. 
Then we have in the lower Miocene the Me- 
sohippus, in which the fourth toe has be- 
come a splint. Next the Miohippus, with 
the splint nearly gone, and the middle hoof 
larger. The animal is now about the size 
of a sheep. After this is the Protohippus in 
the upper Miocene and lower Pliocene, now 
about the size of an ass, with the middle toe 
larger and the two side hoofs shorter. The 
animal is becoming more and more like the 
modern horse. In the Pliocene we have the 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 1 5 

Equus, almost a complete horse, with the 
hoofs reduced to one, the splints of the two 
sides remaining to attest the descent. Finally, 
in the human period, the Equus Caballus, our 
horse, perhaps the most elegant and useful to 
man of all animals, with the hoofs rounder and 
the second bone of the leg more rudimentary, 
and the splint hones shortened, still remaining. 
From the normal number of five, the toes have 
been successively dropped according to a regu- 
lar law — first, the thumb, No. i ; then the lit- 
tle finger, No. 5 ; then the index, No. 2 ; and, 
last, the ring-finger, No. 4 ; and the middle 
finger, No. 3, only remains. 1 This is an appo- 
site example of the way in which, by a process, 
God has provided the horse with its hard hoof 
for man, who to make it harder adds a shoe. 
I hold that there are as clear proofs of design 
in the hoof as in the shoe upon it. 

IX. 
Causes of Variation. — The main cause is 
the tendency of complex bodies to differentiate. 
See p. 8. But there are special agencies. (1) I 
may mention the one to which Darwin has 
given such prominence. It is that of " Natu- 
ral Selection," not a very happy phrase, as it 

1 Le Conte's " Elementary Geology," page 509. 



1 6 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

is apt to leave the impression that there is 
a choice on the part of nature, whereas it is 
all produced by the arrangements made by the 
Creator. This law is otherwise called the 
" Survival of the Fittest." This principle is 
undoubtedly operating in all organic nature, 
and has mighty influences, as, for instance, in 
the five loose toes becoming one solid hoof in 
the horse. A tree, say an oak, expands in an 
English nobleman's park, where it has a rich 
soil and room to breathe in, and is dwarfed or 
dies in a cold and stormy climate. The rose 
grows into greatest fulness and becomes the La 
France in a cultivated garden. The principle 
of the survival of the fittest is a beneficent pro- 
vision, as it preserves the strong and the use- 
ful, while the weak is allowed to die out and 
leave room for something else to take its place 
in the exuberance of God's works. The re- 
ligious man should not object to it, if at certain 
junctures it produces a newer and higher 
species of plant or animal to make up, it maybe, 
for the disappearance of an old species, say, of 
a mammal instead of a reptile. 

(2) There is the strength produced by the 
exercise, and the weakness or disappearance by 
the disuse, of an organ. It is for physiologists 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 1 7 

to explain this. In some cases they can do so. 
The use of an organ draws more blood, 
"wherein is the life," to it. However we may 
account for it, it is a fact with which we are all 
familiar, that the use of an organ makes it more 
useful, and thus leads to the farther use of it. 
The fisherman's chest expands, and the plough- 
man's limbs become stronger, by the employ- 
ment which they give them. Useless organs 
disappear when they become cumbersome, as 
the two first and the two last toes have done in 
the foot of a horse. 

(3) There are the small increments and dec- 
rements of organisms produced by the action 
of the elements and internal movements. 
These may continue and become hereditary. 
Thus a member may be cut off, or an augmen- 
tation made to it. There may be at times an 
extraordinary birth, which to a limited extent 
modifies the model form. By such retarda- 
tions and accelerations, as they have been 
called, cumulative changes are produced, which 
go down to future generations. This is an 
agency much dwelt on by Cope and Hyatt, 
and it is undoubtedly acting everywhere in 
nature, and helping to produce the great num- 
ber of variations in individuals, and, perhaps, 



1 8 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

even in species which we observe clustering 
round the generic type. 

These modifications are produced very much 
by the environment of the organism, which is 
always liable to be influenced by the company 
which it keeps. But as all organisms are com- 
plex, that is, have various elements, there may 
be changes produced by the interaction of in- 
ternal forces, as, for example, when the plant or 
animal grows, or when it decays. It is certain 
that by these influences, and it may be by oth- 
ers, known or unknown, varieties are produced ; 
some think even new species. Religion has 
nothing to say against this, and observation has 
much to say in its favor. 

X. 

Homologies with Adaptations. — The two 
facts which show design are order and adap- 
tation, general order and special adaptations. 
They are seen in human workmanship, where 
we have houses, machines, clocks, watches, 
formed on a plan, but the parts made to ac- 
complish special ends. They are seen in Divine 
workmanship, where we have common forms, 
with adjustments to a purpose ; what I have 
called Typical Forms and Special ends. The 
common causes produce the general order, be- 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 1 9 

ing so collocated by Him who instituted them. 
As they act they produce changes which by the 
same Divine wisdom accomplish particular ends. 

In all animate nature we have homologies — 
that is, common forms adapted to different pur- 
poses. Thus in plants we have the petals, sta- 
mens, and pistils of the flower, all after the leaf 
type, according to the discovery of Goethe. I 
have shown that the tree, its branches, and its 
branchlets, are after the same form — that is of 
a leaf, as determined by its ribs. The four 
typical limbs of vertebrate animals become fins 
in fishes, wings in birds, feet in mammals, and 
two of them hands in man. There are typical 
vertebrae running along the backbone, but dif- 
fering in different parts of the column, and with 
special appendages, in wings, and arms, and 
other useful organs. 

There are also homologies in invertebrate 
animals not so determinate and often difficult 
to detect, but very instructive in showing apian 
in the formation of these lower creatures, and 
some of them pointing on to the vertebrate 
structure, and to man himself : as when the 
limbs of a lobster are variously developed and 
used as jaws, walking and running organs, as 
well as for moving the gills, and supplying them 



20 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

with a stream of water. It has been found that 
all the vertebrates and all the invertebrates, ex- 
cept the Protozoa, agree together in their early 
development from an egg by germ-layers, from 
which the different organs of the adult animals 
are variously produced. 

Of the two factors the former — that is, the 
general order — is the more prominent in the 
types of the older naturalists and of Cuvier, 
and the other, that of specialty, is seen in the 
modifications produced by the environment, 
according to Lamarck, St. Hilaire, and Dar- 
win. The two are illustrated by the arrange- 
ment of plants by Linnaeus, one of the great 
classifiers of nature, under a binomial division 
of genera and species, the former representing 
the common resemblance, and the latter the 
special difference. 

Now, the doctrine of development gives us a 
glimpse of the way in which the organs have 
been formed and varied to accomplish an end 
necessary to the existence of the plant and ani- 
mal. It shows us, too, how organs disappear at 
times, leaving only a rudimental form, as evi- 
dence, like tombstones, of their once having 
lived. They have shrunk because no longer 
used, being no longer of use. Thus we have 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 21 

the mammae, in male animals, the sightless eyes 
of fishes in the Adalberg and Kentucky caves, 
and the rudimentary teeth in the young of 
whales. 

I venture to suggest that seeds are the ho- 
mologues of the whole plant, and the germ of 
the whole animal, being concentrations of these 
ingredients, and the product varying according 
to the ingredients present. Von Baer has shown 
that there is a most remarkable parallelism be- 
tween the embryology of the individual, and the 
past history of the race. Animals start in the 
womb as a single cell, and though there is no 
doubt a difference, the embryo of man cannot 
be distinguished from that of a worm. But as 
the human embryo grows it becomes like a fish, 
a reptile, a mammal, and finally takes the hu- 
man form. It thus passes through the series 
of the ramified classification of animals given 
above, the kingdom, sub-kingdom, class, order, 
family, genus, and species. " On the hypothe- 
sis of evolution this parallelism has a meaning ; 
indicates the primordial kinship of all organ- 
isms and that progressive differentiation of them 
which the hypothesis alleges. But on any other 
theory the parallelism is meaningless." z 

1 Conn's " Evolution of To-Day," p. 144. 



22 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

XL 

Are Species Unchangeable ? — It is acknowl- 
edged on all hands, by evolutionists as well as 
anti-evolutionists, that all plants and animals 
belong to a natural species. This distinction 
has a safe place in the economy of nature. It 
accomplishes most important ends. It keeps 
nature from running into inextricable confu- 
sion. It makes organic nature comprehensible 
and usable by human intelligence. 

So deep is the distinction, that about two 
centuries ago naturalists laid it down as a 
maxim, that species are so fixed as to be im- 
mutable — as the law of gravitation is. There 
are people who ask us, with a look of absolute 
incredulity and scorn : Do you really believe 
and have the effrontery to maintain that by 
natural law the lily can be changed into a rose 
and a sheep into a goat ? The fixity of species 
has become (it was not so in ancient times) a 
religious doctrine, and a sacred feeling has 
gathered around it which it is dangerous to 
disturb. It is certain that species are so fixed 
that they cannot readily be changed. It is 
certain that God has so arranged natural law 
that combinations have been formed that can- 
not be dissevered by any ordinary law. No 
one believes that by natural selection a deer 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 23 

can be turned into a horse, or a cow into an 
elephant. It is allowed that species are not so 
fixed as to prevent varieties. These often dif- 
fer very widely from the original stock and 
from one another. What a difference exists 
in the pigeons, in their forms and colors, while 
they have all sprung from the rock pigeon. 
What a diversity in the roses, which have all 
come from the common dog rose. The breeds 
of dogs vary in size, in shape, in gentleness or 
fierceness, but are believed to be descended 
from some wolf-like creature. There are said 
to be about twelve species of horse, all de- 
scended from the Eohippus, and he from an 
older ungulate who lived a hundred of millions 
of years ago. 

It is often urged as an objection to the the- 
ory of evolution, that the varieties and breeds 
of domestic animals which have been produced 
by the agency of man, are apt when allowed to 
run wild to return to the original type. It is 
not difficult to explain the actual facts in ac- 
cordance with evolution as it is explained in 
this treatise. In the progress of development 
animals assume a fixed structure which they 
naturally retain and cannot easily be changed. 
But when placed in new surroundings altera- 
tions may be produced. These will continue 



24 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

as long as the environment continues the same ; 
that is, as long as the animal is in a state of 
domestication. But when it is placed back in 
its old position, its old nature still remaining in 
it will bring it back to its old form. Darwin 
mentions the case of domestic rabbits which 
were carried to the Isle of Porto Santo, near 
Madeira, in 1618 or 161 9, a.d., and became 
there very different from any domestic breed, 
as well as from the original species. They are 
much smaller than the European rabbits. 
" The upper fur is redder, with few or no black 
hairs ; the throat and belly are generally pale 
gray or leaden color instead of pure white." 
" The males of the Porto Santo rabbits refuse to 
associate or breed with the domestic varieties." 
When these rabbits were brought back to the 
London Zoological Garden, they began to as- 
sume the appearance of the English wild rab- 
bit ; the edging of the ears and upper surface 
of the tail became blackish-gray, and the whole 
body much less red. " Thus, on returning 
them to their original European environment, 
the characters of the parent wild species, which 
had been dormant at Porto Santo, began to re- 
assert themselves." x 

1 Darwin : " The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domes- 
ication," vol. i., pp. 141-144. 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 2$ 

The whole tendency of nature is to prevent 
the mixture of species, which in most depart- 
ments is impossible, which in some cases is 
unnatural and restrained by the sterility of the 
offspring, and can never occur except in rare 
and exceptional cases. All the while it is not 
so easy to determine wherein a species differs 
from its congeners, and as to certain breeds, 
whether they are varieties or different species. 
A species is not constituted by mere external 
agreement, for creatures very like each other 
may belong to very different species and genera. 
The only decisive point which can now be 
fixed on as separating species is the infertility 
of the offspring produced by crossing. The 
offspring of different species when they pair 
are supposed to be unfertile. But it is urged 
by our advanced naturalists that even this 
mark is failing the anti-evolutionists. It is af- 
firmed that there are hybrids which breed and 
continue to breed. It is known that there are 
different domestic races which cross and yet 
continue fertile. It is alleged that natural 
races may do the same, and that in rare cases 
the fertility of hybrids seems slightly greater 
than that of the legitimate young. 1 It does 

1 Conn's "Evolution of To-Day," chap. I. 



26 THE STATE OF THE QUESTION. 

not appear that the crossing of different 
species of plants leads to sterility. It is a 
question for science to settle and not religion, 
which does not seem to me to have any special 
interest in the question, though it is gratified to 
find that there are such limits to the crossing 
of natural kinds as to prevent breeds from 
running into confusion. 

It has often been demanded of evolutionists 
that they present before our eyes a case of one 
species being changed into another. Evolu- 
tionists argue that this is unreasonable, as such 
transformations can take place only by slow 
processes, which cannot be noticed by any 
observer. This answer has commonly been 
regarded as sufficient. But now it is said that 
an actual transformation has been observed. 
A Russian naturalist, Schmankewitsch, had 
noticed that a species of Crustacea, Artemia 
Milhausenii, has been changed by the gradual 
freshening of a salt-water lake in which the 
creature lived. Acting on the principle in- 
volved, he added salt to the water till he 
changed the species into another (A. Salina), 
which again he transformed into a third. 
Freshening the water, it was turned into still 
another creature which had been ranked as a 



THE STATE OF THE QUESTION 2 J 

distinct genus by naturalists. 1 Let this case 
be thoroughly sifted by scientific men, who 
will determine for us whether the new creatures 
produced are mere varieties or really new 
species and genera. I am sure meanwhile that 
religion is safe whatever be the decision 
come to. 

I have never been able to see that religion, 
and in particular that Scripture in which our 
religion is embodied, is concerned with the 
question of the absolute immutability of species. 
Final Cause, which is a doctrine of natural re- 
ligion, should be satisfied with species being 
so fixed as to secure the stability of nature. If 
new species appear in our world, they differ so 
slightly from the old, out of which they have 
been formed, that there are no violent or revo- 
lutionary changes involved. Nature is kept 
steadfast and theism is satisfied, even though 
in rare circumstances a new species should be 
produced to diversify nature and make it equal 
to the duty of peopling the earth, which is cer- 
tainly one of the purposes of God by which he 
widens the sphere of happiness. 

1 Conn's " Evolution of To-day," p. 26. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 
I. 

The Formative Period of the Earth. — 
" No one can find out the work which God 
doeth from the beginning unto the end." 
Science does not know what was the beginning, 
nor whether there has been a beginning in 
God's doings ; nor does it know the end, for 
there will be no end. But we know that our 
mundane system, especially our earth, has had 
a beginning, and we can so far trace its history. 
According to the well-known theory of Kant 
and Laplace, started by each independently of 
the other, there is a mass of matter with an 
impulse given to it rotating from west to east, 
and throwing off the earth as a fiery liquid, to 
move in the same direction. As the earth ro- 
tates it is formed into an oblate spheroid. As 
it cools it has a solid crust with thick, gaseous 
substances surrounding it, which, in the process 
of time, are condensed into water. As it then 

28 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 2$ 

presents itself, it is composed of seventy ele- 
ments, less or more, and in it are mechanical, 
chemical, gravitating forces, probably also 
magnetic and electric — whatever these may 
be. 1 As they operate, divisions and combina- 
tions take place — what are called differentiations 
and concentrations. The atmosphere is sepa- 
rated from the land, and, as the oscillations of 
the crackling earth go on, portions of land rise 
above the waters. " Mountain chains," says 
Le Conte, " seem to be produced by the secu- 
lar cooling, and, therefore, contraction of the 
earth, greater in the interior than the exterior, 
in consequence of which the face of the old 
earth is become wrinkled." As yet there is no 
sun ; which, in fact, is being condensed out of 
the nebular mass, but light and heat are gener- 
ated, ready to nourish the tiny plants which 
are ready to spring up on the rocks lying under 
the waters. In all this God is working, not 
by special interferences, but by the natural 
causes which develop into effects — in other 
words, by evolution. So far, there is no dif- 
ference of opinion. All is by evolution. 

1 There is a central truth in Laplace's theory, but, to account for 
the whole phenomena, a place must be given to the powers referred 
to above. 



30 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

II. 

The Archaic or Eozoic Age. — In the long 
formative period there was no life ; indeed, 
there could have been none, owing to the in- 
tense heat. Life appears first in the Lauren- 
tian rocks which stretch through Canada, where 
they are 40,000 feet in depth, on into the 
United States, and are also found in Scotland, 
and bulk largely in Bohemia. These are not 
primary rocks, for they are formed of matter 
carried by rivers into the sea. In them are 
found the Eozoon, of so amorphous a character 
that it has been disputed whether it is an ani- 
mal or a mere mineral. If there were animals, 
there must also have been plants, vitalizing min- 
erals, to feed them. We know otherwise that 
there must have been life, from the graphite 
and limestone in the formation. Life has ap- 
peared. How ? Certainly from the God who 
made the world. Was it by God's immediate 
fiat, or by evolution ? The question is started ; 
the discussion of it may be adjourned till we 
have the facts fully before us. Meanwhile it is 
certain that from this date we have evolution — 
every plant and every animal from an ancestry. 

III. 

The Silurian, the Age of Invertebrates, 
Specially of Molluscs. — The formation lies 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 3 1 

unconformably on the Laurentian, showing 
long deposits and numerous upheavals. It is 
found in the borders of Wales and in the State 
of New York, and in many other places. There 
is now an abundance of plants, mainly marine, 
chiefly algae, or sea-weeds. Animals are also 
numerous, such as sponges, radiates, corals, 
forming reefs, medusae, jelly-fishes. There are 
fossils of beautiful graptolites, of stemmed 
echinoderms and crinoids. There are ceph- 
alopods, the most highly organized and most 
powerful of the tribe ; they are represented in 
the present day by the nautilus, the squid, and 
cuttle-fishes. In this age articulated animals 
appear, specially soft fleshy worms, not pre- 
served themselves, but two hundred species are 
made known by their tracks and borings, so 
important in producing soil. In the Lower 
Silurian there is no evidence of terrestrial or 
fresh-water life. In the Upper Silurian there 
are remains of terrestrial plants, such as club- 
mosses. I am pleased to observe that these 
are branched at definite angles, like the trees 
which come at a late date. In the trilobites, 
which now reach their maximum size, well con- 
structed eyes are visible of the invertebrate 
type. It is said that before the Silurian age 
closes, may be found vertebrates of a low type. 



32 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

IV. 

The Devonian Age, Which may be Called 
the Fish Age. — Hitherto the plants have been 
chiefly marine. Now land plants are abun- 
dant ; and we discover many that are still with 
us, ferns, lycopods, equisetae, also advanced 
conifers, which may have covered some parts 
of the earth with forests. " In the Hamilton 
beds the evidences of verdure over the land are 
abundant. The remains show that there were 
trees, as well as smaller plants ; that there were 
forests of moderate growth, and great jungles 
over wide-spread marshes." x 

There are peat-bogs and submerged forests, 
anticipations of the coming Coal Measures. 
Insects enliven the forests, and have organs to 
issue sounds which probably imply ears to 
hear them. The fishes which first came are 
ganoids, and sharks, some of them three 
feet thick and from fifteen to eighteen feet 
long. The more elegant forms of teleosts, 
which now swim in our seas have not yet ap- 
peared. " The most fundamental law of evo- 
lution," says Le Conte, " where is differentia- 
tion," i. e., a separating of generalized into sev- 
eral specialized forms, a separation of one 

1 Dana's " Geology," p. 268. 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 33 

stem into several branches. The Devonian 
fishes are an admirable illustration of this law. 
The first introduced fishes were not typical 
fishes, but sauroids — i. e., fishes, which com- 
bined with their distinctive fish characters others 
which allied them with reptiles. They were the 
representatives and progenitors of both classes. 
From this common stem diverge two branches, 
viz., typical fishes on the one hand, and reptiles 
on the other. " This is but one example of a 
very general law which may be formulated 
thus : The first introduced of any class or or- 
der were not typical representatives of that 
class or order, but connecting links with other 
classes or orders, the complete separation of 
two or more classes or orders being the result 
of subsequent evolution." 1 

V. 
The Carboniferous or Great Plant and 
Coal Age. — The great classes and orders of 
plants scatter, and are more firmly organized 
than in any other age. Between 2,000 and 
3,000 fossil plants have been found, and one 
fourth of them are of this formation. The 
lower forms of plant life continue, but rising 
above them are the ramified forms of conifers, 

1 " Geology," p. 332. 



34 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

lepidodendrons, sigillariae, and calamites. 
These sinking in a warm, moist, stifling clim- 
ate, and in stagnant water, become hardened 
by heat and pressure into coal. It is the 
great coal-bearing era with its sandstones, 
shales, and lime-stones, and with metalliferous 
veins running through them. Without the 
plant deposits, and the power from the sun 
stored up in them, human factories and man's 
working capacity would have been greatly lim- 
ited. There are Coal Measures with a thick- 
ness of 10,000 feet, indicating what a length 
of time this age must have lasted. The fishes 
become reptilian in character, and amphibia 
make their appearance. The Palaeozoic now 
passes away, and a new era appears. 

VI. 
The Mesozoic Age, That of Reptiles. — 
It is divided into the Triassic, Jurassic, and 
Cretaceous. It is not necessary in this epitome 
to give a separate account of each of these. 
The plants are still making coal in the Jurassic 
period. Vegetation consists mainly of such 
plants as ferns, cycads, and conifers ; but higher 
forms uppear. In this latter age the highest 
forms of plants, dicotyledons, come forth. 
Fossils of the trees with which we are familiar 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY, 35 

are found, such as oaks, willows, poplars, sassi- 
fras, dog-wood, maple, hickory, beach, walnut, 
sweet gum, laurel, fig, sequoia, tulip. 

In this age reptiles reign in the sea, on the 
land, and in the air, some of them crawling, such 
as saurians and crocodiles ; but some standing 
and moving on their hind legs, thereby antici- 
pating birds and man himself ; and some of 
them, such as the pterodactyls, flying, and 
warm-blooded like mammals. In the Jurassic 
the Atlantosaurus, discovered by Marsh, seems 
to have been nearly ioo feet in length and 30 
in height. To show how the forms run into 
each other, Dana says : " As in birds the bones 
of pterodactyls are hollow, to fit them for fly- 
ing ; but unlike birds they have the skin, claws, 
and teeth of reptiles. Their habits were those of 
bats rather than birds." x Birds come forth 
fully developed in this age ; some of them not 
capable of flight. Birds begin in long-tailed 
or reptilian species ; six species have been 
found with teeth. Some of the reptiles have 
mammalian characters, especially in the teeth. 
In the later deposits are found mammals near- 
ly all of them marsupials and insectivorous. 
The character of the age is summed up by 

1 Dana's " Geology," p. 446. 



36 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

Dana : " It is the era of the first mammals, the 
first birds, the first of the common or osseous 
fishes, and the first palms and angiosperms." x 
The disturbance which in America closed the 
Mesozoic period, upheaved half the continent 

VII. 
The Cenozoic Age, That of Mammals. — 
" The ages," says Geikie, " of lycopods, ferns, 
cycads, and yew-like conifers have passed away, 
and that of dicotyledons and angiosperms, of 
the hard-wood trees and evergreens, now suc- 
ceeds ; but not by sudden extinction and re- 
creation, for, as we have seen, some of these 
trees had already begun to make their appear- 
ance even in Cretaceous times." 2 The early 
animals were chiefly herbivorous, such as 
the Phenacodus, Coryphodon, and Hyraco- 
therium. The age of reptiles is past, and mar- 
supials are very much confined to Aus- 
tralia. In the fossils, we discover the remains 
of such animals as eagles, owls, and wood- 
peckers ; nearly all the genera and many of the 
species of plants and also of invertebrates are 
the same as at present. This age closes with the 
great Glacial epoch, in which a great portion 
of the earth was covered with ice and snow, 

1 " Geology," p. 403 2 " Geology," p. 837. 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 37 

believed to have been 7,000 feet thick in Nor- 
way, and the temperature intensely cold. We 
see traces of it in the striated rocks, in our 
mountains, and in boulders often carried to 
long distances. The great ice sheets of 
Switzerland and Norway are remnants of it. 
The cold led to the destruction of many species 
of plants and animals, and the migrations of 
others toward warmer regions. In this age 
placentals, such as monkeys, make their ap- 
pearance. 

VIII. 

The Quaternary Age, That of the 
Largest Mammals. — Plants and animals have 
become what they now are. Plants identical 
with species living all over Europe retreat to 
the northern regions and are found in high 
altitudes. In South America animals take the 
form of sloths, armadillos and llamas. In va- 
rious countries mammals take a gigantic size, 
such as the extinct elks, the mammoth and 
mastodon. This mammal age gives way to 
that of man — intelligent and responsible man. 

IX. 

Inferences. — The above is a brief and 
necessarily imperfect geological history. We 
perceive that : 



38 THE ORGANIC HISTORY, 

i. There is what scientists call system, 
what platonists call an idea, what theologians 
call design or purpose, in the history of organic 
life. It is produced by God, but the question 
arises, whether without, or with, creature in- 
strumentality, and the further question, whether 
the instrumentality, if there be such, can be 
discovered by human research. 

2. There is a gradual rise ; through millions 
of years, or rather ages, of vegetable and ani- 
mal life. The question is, whether this can be 
produced by evolution, always under God. It 
will be generally admitted that the formation 
of the mere matter of the earth, its seas, moun- 
tains, and rivers, have been effected by natural 
causes. May it not be the same with the 
growth of the organic world, it being always 
understood that the causes are different ? 

3. It is admitted that the individual plant 
and animal are generated from a parent. May 
it not be the same with the vegetable races — 
the horse we ride on, from an older and diminu- 
tive horse, birds and marsupials from certain 
forms of reptiles ? There is nothing atheistic 
in this supposition. 

4. We have convincing evidence of the de- 
scent of races from older races. I have already 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 39 

given the details as to the horse. We have 
many other cases, these increasing as new 
regions are explored. The very Eohippos 
seems to have been a descent from the ungu- 
lates. 

"In the earliest Tertiary deposits of North 
America," says Prof. Scott to me, "we 
find a series of five-toed plantigrade ani- 
mals from which all the hoofed animals 
have descended, the difference between the 
various groups having been continually aug- 
mented with the process of time. The gene- 
alogy of the tapir and rhinoceros has now been 
completely made out, running back to a com- 
mon ancestor in the early Tertiary formations. 
Step by step changes in the character of the 
dentition, and of all parts of the skeleton have 
been accumulated, until they result in animals of 
a very different character. In the same manner 
the passage from pig-like animals to the rumi- 
nants has been demonstrated, and the recent 
discovery of a five-toed ruminant proves the 
origin of the ruminating animals from the 
primitive common ancestors of all hoofed ani- 
mals including even the elephant. 

"The history of the Camel and Llama tribes 
is also very well understood ; with very small 



40 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

four-toed animals with complete series of teeth 
in both jaws ; then passing to forms in which 
only the two median, the third and fourth, of 
the original series are preserved ; then these 
two fuse into a single cannon bone, some 
of the teeth are lost, and the limbs lengthen, 
the animals become larger, till the modern 
form is reached. Rutimayer has proved 
the gradual derivation of the Ox tribe from 
antelope-like animals, these from deer-like 
forms, and these again from the primitive 
pig-like types. In the case of the carnivora, 
we have clear evidence of their descent from 
insectivorous animals ; and it has lately been 
proved that all of the land carnivora have been 
derived from the primitive dog-like animals of 
the Eocene territory. Transitional types be- 
tween these animals and the bear series on the 
one hand, and the cat and hyena series on the 
other, are now abundantly known. There are 
many groups, it need hardly be said, as to 
which our information is still very incomplete, 
but new discoveries are continually announced 
which widen the horizon for us. It seems 
hardly too much to say that before many years 
the genealogy and inter-relationships of all 
mammalian groups will be fairly understood." 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 4 1 

5. We have numerous examples of transition 
cases. Professor Scott says : " The earliest 
known birds, Archaeopteryx, from the Jurassic 
formation, are amazingly close to reptiles in 
structure. They possess teeth of reptilian 
types, without a beak, in the modern sense of 
the word ; the structure of the hand was unlike 
that of any living bird, in that the fingers were 
all free (z. e., not fused into one mass), and all 
had claws ; the foot can hardly be distinguished 
from that of some reptiles ; the tail was like 
that of a lizard, but with a pair of feathers at- 
tached to each joint. It is particularly worthy 
of note that these peculiarities, even the pos- 
session of teeth, are reproduced in the embryos 
of modern birds. On the other hand, certain 
of the extinct reptiles approach these birds 
very closely in all points of structure, so that 
almost the only mark of separation between 
the two groups, birds and reptiles, is the pres- 
ence or absence of feathers. Thus palaeon- 
tology and embryology agree perfectly in the 
derivation of birds from reptiles." "The two 
pairs of fins in fishes represent the two pairs 
of limbs of higher species ; an air-bladder, the 
lungs ; a loose-bone in a closed cavity, the ear." J 

1 Dana's " Geology," p. 594. 



42 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

It is well known that aquatic animals have 
become suited to a terrestrial life. The air 
bladder of certain fishes, such as the mud 
fishes of Africa, came to possess a respiratory 
function, and developed as a lung. In the tad- 
pole we see the gill, but it is superseded by the 
lung. The male animal has mammae ; the un- 
born whale has rudimentary teeth ; in the pi- 
thon there are rudiments of limbs. The whales 
and porpoises are like fish, but science declares 
them to be mammals. 

We discover cases in which the distinctions 
supposed to be deepest in the organic king- 
doms are effaced. The main distinction in 
plants is between the monocotyledons, which 
have parallel veins, and the dicotyledons, which 
have curved veins ; yet we have the arum and 
smilax, which are monocotyledons, and yet 
have reticulated leaves. Often have I seen 
the sun-dew plant sucking in insects and feed- 
ing on them, which shows that the difference 
between plant and animal is capable of being 
bridged over/ But perhaps the most striking 

1 Often on the Grampians of Scotland have I watched the beautiful 
sun-dew plant drawing in insects and dissolving them. Had I pub- 
lished this when I first noticed it, I might have anticipated Darwin 
in his discovery of flesh-eating plants. I failed to do this and lost 
my chance of becoming famous ! ! :! 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 43 

case is that in which there are exceptions to 
the law, which was supposed to be fixed and 
unchangeable, that all mammals bring forth 
their young alive — that is, are viviparous. 
These curious animals, the Duck-bill and the 
spiny Ant-eater, are truly mammals, yet the 
eggs laid by them have been found within the 
last few years in Australia by Caldwell and 
Haacke, showing that they are oviparous. All 
this does not prove that there is no such thing 
as Natural Kinds, or that there are no fixed 
distinctions in nature, and that therefore na- 
ture is not settled ; it shows merely that there 
are variations which diversify the unity in our 
world, and have this further advantage, that 
they show us the way in which nature works 
to produce an infinite diversity in the midst of 
sameness. 

6. A confirmation of the theory of the evo- 
lution of races is found in the circumstance 
that in islands far removed from continents, as, 
for instance, Bermuda, St. Helena, the Gala- 
pagos, and through the Malayan Archipelago, 
there are no mammals. Quadrupeds have 
been produced on continents, and are not capa- 
ble of swimming into these separated places. 
In these same islands are no species of frogs, 



44 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

toads, or newts, as their spawns are killed by 
salt water. There are no placental mammals 
in Australia, except perhaps rats, which was 
separated from Asia before placental mammals 
had been gendered. If new species are neces- 
sarily the immediate creation of God, one does 
not see how he should not have created these 
in islands as well as on continents. 

The following summary has been drawn out 
by Prof. Cope : " The mammalia have been 
traced to the theromorphous reptiles through 
the monotremata. The birds, some of them, 
at least, appear to have been derived from the 
dinosaurian reptiles. The reptiles in the 
primary representative order, the theromorpha, 
have been probably derived from the rhachito- 
mous batrachia. The batrachia have origi- 
nated from the sub-class of fishes, the dipnoi, 
though not from any known form. I have 
shown that the true fishes, or teleostomi, have 
descended from an order of sharks, the ichthy- 
otomi, which possess characters of the dipnoi 
also. The origin of the sharks remains entire- 
ly obscure, as does also that of the pisces as a 
whole. Dohrn believes the marsipobranchii 
to have acquired their present characters by a 
process of degeneration. The origin of the 



THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 4$ 

vertebrata is as yet entirely unknown, Kowal- 
evsky deriving them from the ascidians and 
Semper from the annelida." x 

All this does not mathematically demonstrate 
that evolution is and must be universal. It is 
conceivable that in regions yet unexplored 
there may be cases in which vegetable and ani- 
mal life may have been produced otherwise 
than by parentage. But it is equally true that 
we cannot prove that gravitation must be 
necessarily universal. There may be worlds 
or, it is supposable, spots in our world, where 
bodies are held together by a different law 
from that discovered by Newton. All that can 
be done by mere observation in either case 
is to show that there is such a law ex- 
tensively prevailing, with no known excep- 
tion. But at this point there comes in the 
more universal law, established by a wide and 
uncontradicted experience, that nature is uni- 
form. We are entitled to argue that the law 
of gravitation, being so wide-spread, is a law of 
nature, and must be operating in places of the 
earth or planets of which we know nothing. 
On the same ground evolutionists infer that 
the development of living beings is so general 

1 Cope's " Origin of the Fittest," p. 317. 



46 THE ORGANIC HISTORY. 

that it must be universal throughout the or- 
ganic world. But while the law of genetic 
descent is universal, it does not therefore 
follow that there is no other power involved in 
the genesis of our earth and the direction of 
its history. Every one acknowledges that 
gravitation has universal sway in our mundane 
system, but there are powers of chemical affin- 
ity, of capillary attraction, of electric and mag- 
netic motion, also operating, which act with, or 
stay, or control the law of gravity : thus, mag- 
netism will hold up a piece of metal which 
would otherwise fall to the ground. At this 
point extreme evolutionists are to be met, by 
showing that there are other powers which 
have acted with it or have limited it. I am to 
show that while there are universal laws of 
descent there are other powers necessary to 
the origination and continuance of the world. 



CHAPTER III. 

POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 
I. 

Other Agents besides Evolution. — There 
are agents performing an essential part in the 
formation and continuation of our world which 
are not mentioned, except incidentally, by geol- 
ogists. There are some things which cannot 
be brought into the physicist's laboratory, and 
which therefore he may not be required spe- 
cially to discuss ; but he should not in his nar- 
rowness disparage or ridicule those who in- 
sist on looking at them and finding out the 
part which they play. I will do no more than 
refer to the creation of matter, to show that it 
has not been overlooked. But it is of impor- 
tance to bring into view and meditate on cer- 
tain agents which have played a most impor- 
tant part in the formation of our world, but 
which cannot, so far as we see, be evolved 
from the material which we have been consid- 
ering. 

47 



48 POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 

II. 

Light. — We do not know all the mystery of 
its action. It consists of vibrations in an ether. 
When and whence came that ether with its 
properties ? There is no evidence that it has 
developed in the ordinary action of matter. It 
is certain that it performs a very important 
part in the economy of nature. It is necessary 
to the growth of plants and animals. Perhaps 
no one can tell whether it has come from an 
antecedent mundane matter, or whether, like 
matter itself and its forces, mechanical, chemi- 
cal, gravitating, it may not be the immediate 
product of the creative power of God, who 
said, " Let there be light, and there was light." 

III. 

Life. — Geology shows an indefinitely long 
azoic period in the history of our world. Life 
appears first when plants appear. It is not, 
like extension and mechanical power, of the 
essence of matter. The great mass of matter 
has no life. No chemical, magnetic, or electric 
force can produce it. No scientific man can 
manufacture it in his laboratory. It is some- 
thing superinduced upon ordinary matter upon 
the four elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
and carbon, which it turns to its uses. It pos- 



POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 49 

sesses very marked properties : it has a power 
of Assimilation, such as the Crystal, the high- 
est form of dead matter, does not possess, it 
draws in the elements, and transforms them 
into its own living body ; it has a power of 
Growth, and may expand a germ into the swell- 
ing tree or the huge mastodon ; it has a power 
of Reproduction, gendering a seed which gen- 
ders other life ; it is intended that there should 
be a series of creatures enjoying life, and so it 
has a power of Waste whereby it dies, but 
leaves behind it a new life. 

IV. 

Sensation. — This appears in the animal in 
the Eozoic, or at least in the Palaeozoic ages. 
It is allowed that ordinary matter does not pos- 
sess feeling. There is no proof that vegetable 
life has it, though in our poetical moments we 
fondly believe that there are leaves and flowers 
with a sensitive nature. We are now in a 
higher region than the corporeal ; we are be- 
yond the physical ; we are in the psychical. 

This sensation cannot be defined so as to 
make it comprehensible to any who have not 
felt it. It is known, its very nature is, to all 
who have experienced it, so that explanation is 
not needed by them, and no explanation can 



50 POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 

make it clearer to them. The creatures that 
have sensation have also a power of locomo- 
tion. Henceforth much of the activity of the 
world arises from animals seeking pleasure and 
avoiding pain. I defy any one to show that 
this sensation so varied, often so strong, can 
be produced from any of the powers previously 
existing on the earth, nor even from Life — in 
the plants we have life, but no feeling. 

V. 
Instinct. — There may be animals which 
have sensation, but with no' instinct. But in- 
stinct appears very early in the animal king- 
dom. We have now more than life, more than 
feeling — there is a low kind of thought. It 
takes most remarkable forms in insects, such as 
ants and bees, which perform deeds of which 
they cannot be supposed to know the full 
meaning. Animals lay up food in summer to 
provide nourishment for them in the winter, of 
which they cannot have any clear conception. 
The mother duck makes it appear as if she 
could not fly, to allure the dog to follow 
her, and thus allow the ducklings to escape. 
The curlew places its bare nest on a place from 
which there runs a hollow, and down this it 
runs when a boy approaches, and raises a cry 



POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 5 I 

at some distance to allure the boy from her 
eggs or young. Instinct rises higher in more 
advanced animals, such as horses, elephants, 
and dogs. It is natural and original, and does 
not depend on experience, though to a small 
extent it can take advantage of experience. 
We have now anticipation of intelligence. 
There is now memory ; animals remember the 
blow, and the person inflicting it. There is 
imagination ; dogs, as Aristole says, hunt in 
their dreams. There seem to be low kinds of 
reasoning, or at least of the association of ideas, 
on which reasoning so much depends. 

VI. 
Intelligence. — This may not be altogether 
independent of instinct, of whose acts it sees 
the meaning and makes use of them ; but it is 
something higher. It looks at the nature of 
things, at their forms, colors, properties ; and 
can discover the causes of things. " We know 
in part." It can abstract, generalize, and 
reason, and rise to an imperfect idea of the in- 
finite. It can look far back into the past, and 
far forward into the future. It can devise 
means to accomplish ends. It can entertain 
feelings of sympathy and kindness, and it. 
grieves over the decease of companions. 



52 POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 

VII. 

Morality and the higher intelligence are 
closely connected, and may have come in to- 
gether. By the latter, we discover what things 
are ; by the former, what they ought to be. 
Morality, then, reveals something higher. It 
shows us the distinction between good and 
evil, and lays man under obligation to attend 
to the one and avoid the other. We have 
now reached the highest eminence which this 
world has yet attained : the age of moral and 
responsible man. 

VIII. 

How have These Agents Come in ? By 
What Cause ? — I maintain that no one of 
them could have been produced by the ordi- 
nary powers of nature. 

It is a law of causation anticipated, as can be 
shown, from an old date that a cause — I am 
speaking only of physical causes — can give 
only what it possesses. Causation cannot cre- 
ate any thing new ; it cannot give what it has 
not within itself. There is nothing in the ef- 
fect which was not potentially in the cause ; 
that is, in the agents which constitute the 
cause. There is no proof that any of the 
agents just named, say sensation, or intelli- 



POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 53 

gence, were in the atoms, or in the mechanical 
or chemical powers. But there is a point of 
time at which they appear, when the first pain 
or pleasure is felt, and the first perception of 
things takes place. The powers once intro- 
duced continue ever afterwards to act. 
Their appearance, from whatever cause they 
spring, constitutes an epoch. Their action is 
not inconsistent with the great geological 
changes, but is coincident with them, and op- 
erates in producing them. 

Whence came they? How come they — the 
vibrating ether constituting light ? So far as 
life is concerned, it is still true — omne vivttm ab 
ovo. Our highest scientific men, even those 
most prepossessed in favor of the doctrine, al- 
low that there has been no case produced of 
spontaneous generation — that is, of life pro- 
ceeding from any thing but antecedent life. 
Whence, then, the first life ? If there be a dif- 
ficulty in getting life by evolution from the 
lifeless, there is much more in getting some of 
the other agents, say sensation from mechan- 
ical force, or instinct from chemical combina- 
tion, or intelligence from electricity, or moral- 
ity from all combined — say the morality of 
Joseph, " How can I do this great wickedness 



54 POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 

and sin against God?" When these agents 
are generated they develop like products ; 
from life proceeds life, and intelligence gener- 
ates intelligence. But no mundane power can 
produce them at first, and it is reasonable that 
we should refer their production to God, to 
whom all power belongs, even the power of 
evolution. As evolution by physical causes 
cannot do it, we infer that God does it by an 
immediate fiat, even as he created matter and 
the forces which act in matter. We certainly 
know no other power capable of doing it. This 
seems a legitimate conclusion. It calls in a 
power known otherwise to work, and to be 
competent to produce the effect. It makes 
God continue the work of creation, and if 
God's creation be a good work, why should he 
not continue it ? — often it may be with seasons 
of cessation that the already created agents 
may fully develop themselves. He may be a 
continuous creator as he is a continuous pre- 
server, thus widening and enlarging the sphere 
of his wisdom and of his love. 

IX. 
Have They Come by Creature Agency ? — 
There may be, indeed, another supposition. 
Instead of creating immediately these powers, 



POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 55 

God may have evolved them out of other 
agencies. But if so, it is clear that these have 
been called in at an appropriate time to pro- 
duce the life, and the feeling, and the moral 
discernment. In this case the change neces- 
sary to be made in our statement would be, to 
make the appearance of these high agencies an 
act of Providence instead of an act of Crea- 
tion. It may be allowable to put the supposi- 
tion for a moment that these agents have 
been produced by some creature, when it will 
be discovered that there is no advantage in it, 
for the supposed producing powers are un- 
known to us, and evidently must forever re- 
main unknown. We believe that there must 
have been an act of creation out of nothing at 
the beginning ; and the probable conclusion is 
that epochal creations have been continued, 
not interfering with the previous work, but in 
the way of multiplying and expanding it indefi- 
nitely. 

X. 

The New Powers are Superinduced upon 
the Old. — It should be observed of these 
powers, when they come they do not imply or 
require the extinction or disappearance of the 
previously existing powers — as stronger ani- 



56 POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. 

mals often lead to the suppression of weaker. 
On the contrary, the new capacities are thor- 
oughly adapted to the old, act upon them and 
with them, strengthen them and widen their 
influence. Light is necessary to the health 
both of plants and animals. Life gives new 
powers to the mineral, makes it move and as- 
sume new positions, and take new and varied 
forms of utility and beauty in the form of trees 
and flowers, of insects and fishes, of birds and 
quadrupeds, of man and woman. Sensation in 
eating and drinking, in gregarious intercourse, 
and the pairing of sexes, is the grand motive 
to the activity of the animal creation in earth, 
and sea, and sky. Instinct is the peculiar pre- 
server and propagator of living beings all over 
the globe. Intelligence makes man, always 
because God has so appointed, the ruler of this 
last era, and gives him " dominion over the 
fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and 
over the cattle and every creeping thing that 
creepeth on the earth." Morality binds intelli- 
gent men to God above and to men and 
animals below, by stronger bonds than evolu- 
tion can by a common descent and a like nature. 

XI. 
The Old Powers Continue to Act with 
the New. — The new act upon the old, while 



POWERS MODIFYING EVOLUTION. $7 

the old act upon the new, and the action is 
always a joint action, with an abiding conser- 
vation and a constant advance. The new and 
the higher take the old and the lower into 
themselves. The plant is formed out of the 
mineral, which is made to take the nobler 
forms of bird and beast. The animal cannot 
turn the mineral into food ; in order to do this 
it needs to feed on the vegetable. Intelligence 
turns all these agents into use, to accomplish 
beneficent purposes. Morality would direct 
them all to holy ends. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BENEFICENCE IN THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION. 

I. 

God in Evolution. — There is, or was, a 
wide-spread idea that the doctrine of develop- 
ment is adverse to religion. This has arisen 
mainly from the circumstance that it seems to 
remove God altogether, or at least to a greater 
distance from his works, and this has been in- 
creased by the circumstance that the theory 
has been turned to atheistic purposes. This 
impression is to be removed, first, by declaring 
emphatically that we are to look on evolution 
simply as the method by which God works. 
It is a forgotten circumstance that when New- 
ton proclaimed the law of gravitation it was 
urged that he thereby took from God an im- 
portant part of his works to hand it over to 
material mechanism, and the objection had to 
be removed in a quarto volume written by the 
celebrated mathematician, Maclaurin ; and this 
was the more easily done from the circumstance 

53 



BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION. $9 

that Newton was a man of profound religious 
convictions. The time has now come when 
people must judge of a supposed scientific 
theory, not from the faith or unbelief of the 
discoverer, but from the evidence in its be- 
half. They will find that whatever is true, is 
also good, and will in the end be favorable to 
religion. 

A second erroneous impression needs to be 
effaced. Because God executes his purposes 
by agents, which it should be observed he has 
himself appointed, we are not therefore to 
argue that he does not continue to act, that he 
does not now act He may have set agoing 
the evolution millions of years ago, but he did 
not then cease from his operation, and sit aloof 
and apart to see the machine moving. He is 
still in his works, which not only were created 
by him, but have no power without his in- 
dwelling. Though an event may have been 
ordained from all eternity, God is as much 
concerned in it as if he only ordained it now. 
God acts in his works now quite as much as 
he did in their original creation. The effects 
follow, the product is evolved, because he wills 
it, just as plants generate only when there is 
light shining on them ; just as day continues 



60 BENEFICENCE IN THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION. 

only because the sun shines. A birth or a 
death may be brought about by a caused evo- 
lution, but the mother may rest assured that 
God is in both, rejoicing with her, or pitying 
her. 

I hold that time is a reality, so perceived by 
our minds and so perceived by the Divine 
Mind. The eternal now spoken of by some of 
the schoolmen and by the poet Cowley is a 
contradiction. But while time, past, present, 
and future, is a reality to Deity, it may stand 
in a very different relation to him from what 
it is to us. Time, past and future, may be con- 
templated as immediately by him as time pres- 
ent is by us, and his love be literally an ever- 
lasting love, comprehending all time, as his 
omniscience does all space. 

II. 

Final Cause. — I do not propose in these 
lectures to prove anew the existence of God. 
This has been done so satisfactorily by a suc- 
cession of able men since the days of Socrates 
that it does not need to be repeated. My aim 
rather is to show that the doctrine of evolution 
does not undermine the argument from Final 
Cause, but rather strengthens it by furnishing 
new illustrations of the wisdom and goodness 



BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION. 6l 

of God. 1 The proof from design proceeds on 
the observation of things as adapted one to 
another to accomplish a good end, and is 
equally valid whether we suppose adjustment 
to have been made at once or produced by a 
process which has been going on for millions 
of years. There is proof of a designing mind 
in the eye as it is now presented to us, with its 
coats and humors, rods and cones, retina and 
nerves, all co-operating with each other and 
with the beams that fall upon them from suns 
millions of miles away. But there is further 
proof in the agents having been brought into 
relation by long processes all tending to the 
one end. I value a gift received from the hand 
of a father ; but I appreciate it more when I 
learn that the father has been using many and 
varied means to earn it for me. 

III. 
Is the Method of Evolution a Good One ? 
— -I am not prepared to prove that evolution 
is the best way in which God could have pro- 
ceeded, or that there are no other ways equally 
good in which he acts in other worlds. All 
that I profess to do is to show that the method 

1 We have two excellent works published in our day on this subject, 
Saisset's "Final Cause," and Flint's " Theism." 



62 BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION 

is not unworthy of God ; that it is suited to 
man's nature ; that it accomplishes some good 
ends. It is to this extent that I would " jus- 
tify the ways of God to man." 

After all, however, as we do not see the end, 
as we only see half-done work, we cannot per- 
ceive the full wisdom of this mode of proced- 
ure. The common soldier did not discover all 
the wisdom of the military plans of Alexander 
the Great, of Julius Caesar, of Napoleon, or of 
Grant, but he saw enough to convince him 
that they were skilful generals. This is our 
position in regard to God's works : we discover 
enough of the arc to calculate the rest ; and as 
we see so much wisdom in the little that we 
know, we argue that there is vastly more in the 
much that is beyond. 

People will not readily be reconciled to evo- 
lution till they are convinced that it is promot- 
ing a beneficent end. We may advance some 
circumstances fitted to produce this conviction. 

IV. 

Evolution Produces a Successive Order 
in the Organic World. — The present is 
evolved from the past, and is developed into 
the future. There is thus one orderly consti- 
tution of things from the beginning unto the 



BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION. 63 

end, making us feel how stable all things are 
as one generation succeeds another. We in- 
quire into the past in the assurance that, to 
whatever point we go, we find the same laws 
operating as now. The present is the offspring 
of the past, and we can trace its progenitors 
so far back. It is the seed of the future, and 
we can anticipate what is to come, influence it 
for good, and hand down our works to future 
generations. We all feel the blessing of chil- 
dren having parents and of parents having chil- 
dren. Since the days of Newton, every one 
sees how gravitation binds in one all contem- 
poraneous nature, sun to planet and planet to 
sun. We may now see how development binds 
in one compact nature the whole of successive 
nature, the past ages with the present and the 
present with the future. 

V. 
Development by Small Increments Se- 
cures the Continuity of Nature. — The 
continuity of things was fondly dwelt on by 
Leibnitz and the theists of the last century, 
who showed that objects formed connected 
series, in which all the parts shaded gracefully 
into each other ; and that there is a gradation 
from the lowest up to the highest, from the 



64 BENEFICENCE IN THE METHOD OF E VOL UTION. 

sea-weeds to the tree, from the monad up to 
the elephant, from the lowest intelligence up 
to angel and archangel, and to God himself. 
In this century science is seeking to determine 
in what this continuity consists, and what are 
the limits to it. When properly announced it 
is seen to be a beneficent arrangement, secur- 
ing the world from violent convulsions, from 
breaks and separations. It is caused, always 
by a divine arrangement, by means of the de- 
velopment of one thing from another, with 
which it is thereby connected. There is thus a 
permanence in the agents' working, with a pre- 
scribed and restricted variety in their action. 
There is a constancy in nature, but it is a con- 
stant change with a constant abiding. 

VI. 
It Secures Order and Adaptation in Na- 
ture. — TrTese are the two principles in nature 
which prove design ; each separately proves 
the existence of intelligence ; when the two 
are united, the evidence is more than doubled. 
Development under God secures that the two 
are combined, while each has its own place. 
The common seed or stalk produces family 
liknesses throughout nature, while the diver- 
gences provide that each has its individuality, 



BENEFICENCE IN THE METHOD OF E VOL UTION. 65 

by which it may be recognized. Thus in trees 
there is a trunk to give stability to the frame ; 
this strikes off into branches which give a form 
to the whole ; each branch is formed after the 
model of the tree, and gives off branchlets 
which are of a like shape ; and the whole is 
clothed with leaves which are made, by the 
length and angles of their mid-ribs, to take the 
same form as the tree and its branches. In 
the higher animals, there is a backbone which 
gives a unity to the entire skeleton, and to it 
are attached as appendages various members 
of the body, each serving its purpose, such as 
ribs, feet, toes. 

Lamarck at times used language which reads 
as if he said that the wishes of an animal may 
produce an organ ; as if the wish of the animal 
to swim produced fins, and the wish to fly pro- 
duced wings. I am not sure that the French 
naturalist meant this. If he did, he was evi- 
dently misinterpreting nature. There is will 
in the production, but ,it is the will of Him 
who arranged all things, and who has so ar- 
ranged them that organs grow as they are 
used. Petals open to the sun and profit by 
the light, and roots grow toward their nourish- 
ment. We see fishermen with broad shoulders 



66 BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION. 

and strong arms, and ploughmen with stout 
limbs. We can conceive of no method of ac- 
tion by which combined plan and purpose can 
be so effectually secured as by evolution. 

VII. 

Development Secures Progression. — This 
is not necessary. There are numerous cases 
in nature of degeneration and the disappearance 
of races, because of their not being suited to 
their environment, when it is meant that they 
should cease to exist. But as these give way 
others take their place, according to the bene- 
ficial law of the survival of the fittest, and the 
weak races are driven out by the strong. Na- 
ture may tend first to differentiate and scatter ; 
but then it integrates, mainly by evolution, 
which gathers up the parts and produces higher 
organisms. 

Farmers have always believed in heredity, 
and take advantage of it to produce fine breeds 
of sheep and cattle, dogs and horses : of sheep 
bearing rich wool, or yielding good mutton ; of 
cows giving a flow of milk or supplying well-fed 
beef ; of dogs to hunt sheep or hunt game ; of 
horses to run swiftly, or drag loaded wagons. By 
a higher arrangement of nature, or rather, the 
God of nature, the organic world is progress- 
ing : the earth is covered with a richer vegeta- 






BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION. 6j 

tion, and there are cereals where before were 
only heaths and mosses, and man himself is 
farther removed from the savage state. We 
have thus a promise that our earth may become 
a perfect abode for a perfected man. 
VIII. 
The Method of Development is Suited 
to Man's Faculties. — Man is so constituted 
that he has to gather knowledge by experience. 
But of what use would experience be, if the 
future did not resemble the past ? It has been 
shown, again and again, that God's procedure 
by uniform law is the only one which enables 
man, with his present nature, to lay plans in the 
ordinary business of life likely to be successful. 
Were there no such regularity he could not be 
sure that the sun will rise to-morrow, that seed- 
time will be followed by harvest, or that food 
will nourish him. But the successive uniformity 
and consistency of nature are determined by 
the law of evolution, whereby the present comes 
out of the past and goes down into the future, 
with both of which it has connections. With- 
out this, our faculties being as they are, man's 
wisest counsels would have no certainty ; not 
so much as a probability of success, and he 
would cease to devise and act, and in the end, 
cease to live. The method is suited to man, 



68 BENEFICENCE IN THE ME THOD OF E VOL UTION 

and man to the method ; and this by the fore- 
ordained purpose of God, who has made both 
and adapted them to each other. 

IX. 

Difficulties of Theism. — Every one ac- 
knowledges that in looking on nature as the 
work of God we meet with perplexities. Ques- 
tions may be started which we cannot answer. 
How are certain evils, disease and death, and 
inevitable sorrow consistent with the justice 
and love of God ? I fully admit that there are 
results following from the laws of God, which 
it is not easy to reconcile with the omniscience 
and benevolence of Deity. 

Sir William Hamilton has made the remark 
that no difficulty emerges in theology, which 
has not appeared previously in philosophy. A 
similar remark may be made as to evolution. 
No difficulty arises on the theory of develop- 
ment, which does not meet us on the theory of 
the immediate creation of every new individual 
and species. The works of nature are equally 
the works of God on the one supposition as on 
the other, and the mysteries bear against God 
in the one case as in the other. The difficulties 
are swallowed up by the overwhelming evidence 
which we have in behalf of the omniscience 
and benevolence of God. 



CHAPTER V. 

GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 
I. 

Harmony of Genesis and Geology. — It is 
not necessary to dwell on this subject. The 
correspondence has been demonstrated of late 
years by very competent men whose writings 
are accessible to all. In particular this has 
been done by the three men on this continent 
who have the best right to speak on this sub- 
ject from their knowledge of physical geog- 
raphy and geology, — Dr. Guyot, Dr. Dana, 
and Sir William Dawson. I have been most 
indebted to the late Dr. Guyot's little book on 
" Creation." 

In the one of these, the written record, we 
have an account of the genesis of the earth as 
it would have been witnessed by a spectator 
who had lived through the unremembered 
ages ; in the other the combined results of the 
researches of geologists within the last few 
ages. The one is ocular ; the other scientific. 

6 9 



70 GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 

This accounts at once for their essential same- 
ness and their superficial differences — which do 
not imply any contradiction. Professor Hux- 
ley showed in a lecture in New York that there 
were contradictions between geology and Mil- 
ton's picture of creation in " Paradise Lost," 
but he made no special reference to the Bible 
account — we may believe out of reverence — and 
he did not attempt to prove that geology con- 
tradicted Genesis. 1 

I believe that if you would ask a geologist 
to write for us a true account of the production 
of our earth in as brief a space as the first 
chapter of our Bible, he would confess his in- 
ability to do so. Suppose that the opening 
chapter of Genesis, all unknown before, were 
discovered and published in our day, it would 
at once be denounced as a forgery, constructed 
by one who knows geological science, and who 
varies the record simply to keep the trick from 
being detected. 

1 Elsewhere in his reply to Gladstone he alleges that the Bible errs 
in placing birds earlier than reptiles. This he does by making 
(Gen. i., 24) "creeping thing" mean reptile, whereas I understand 
by it the lower mammals. Reptiles being mostly amphibious, are 
included in taninnim (Gen. i., 21), the moving or winged creatures 
placed before birds. In these ages there were numbers of flying 
.creatures, including not only reptiles but amphibians. 



GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. J I 

II. 

The Correspondence. — It consists first in 
both arranging the history into progressive 
periods in the one called Days, in the other 
Ages, Epochs, Formations ; secondly, in the 
order of the appearance of living beings ; and 
thirdly, in man being the consummation of the 
whole. 

It may be useful to preface the comparison 
with a statement by Dana as to the geological 
epochs. " First, the reality of an age in his- 
tory is marked by the development of some 
new idea in the system of progress ; secondly, 
the beginning of the characteristics of an age 
may be looked for in the midst of a preceding 
age, and the marks of the future coming out to 
view are prophetic of the future" (" Geol.," 

P- 137). 

It is scarcely necessary to show, after it has 
been so often done, that the word "Day" is 
constantly used in Scripture to designate a 
fixed period of any kind and is not confined to 
a period of 24 hours. Indeed, it is applied 
in Chapter i. of Genesis to the first three days, 
when, as yet, the sun was not formed and there 
could not have been days as we now measure 
them. In Genesis ii., 4, Moses writes " in the 



72 GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 

day," (the meaning being a period — a very 
lengthened one,) " that the Lord God made the 
earth and the heavens." So it goes on in 
nearly every book of Scripture. It has been 
counted that there are upwards of a hundred 
places in which the phrase denotes a period 
other than that of the rotation of the earth. 

We may now compare and contrast the two 
accounts the record by the spectator, and that 
by the savant. I keep to the general cor- 
respondence, which is sufficient for my purpose, 
and do not specify minute points about which 
there may be differences of interpretation. 

It should be observed that in both there is 
an antecedent and unknown period, when, ac- 
cording to Genesis, the earth was without form 
and void ; when there was a deep with dark- 
ness upon it, and when, according to geology, 
the mundane matter was shapeless and without 
life. The days or epochs begin with the cre- 
ative acts. 

GENESIS. GEOLOGY. 

First Day. 

The Spirit, the source of power There is no formed sun, but 
and order, moves on the deep, there is light ready to germinate 
and there is light. the life now to appear. 

Second Day. 
The separation of the now sol- The consolidation of the earth 



GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 73 

idified earth from the expanse of from its previous igneous state, 
heaven above. and the separation of the earth 

from its gaseous environment. 

Third Day. 

The dry land appears above There is vegetable life of a 

the waters which previously cov- simple form anticipated in the 

ered it, and thus early plant-life Eozoic period, and coming forth 

appears. more fully in the Silurian period. 

Fourth Day. 1 

The sun, moon, and stars be- In this era the sun is formed 
come visible, and henceforth into a definite shape, the moon 
rule the seasons. is thrown off from the earth, and 

the stars become visible, owing to 
the atmosphere being cleared. 

Fifth Day. 

Creation of the lower animals There are the lower forms of 
in water and in air. " And God animals, chiefly marine, fishes, 
said, let the waters teem with reptiles, rising to fowls. It is 
creeping things, swarm with the Miocene and Cainocene ages, 
swarmers, and fowl that may fly 
above the earth. And God cre- 
ated the great stretched out sea 
monsters (tanninim), and all liv- 
ing creatures that creep, which 
the waters breed abundantly 
after their kind, and every 
winged bird after its kind." 

1 I remember that when I was a boy an old infidel addressed me : 
"Oh, how can you believe the Bible, which says there was light be- 
fore the sun appeared ? " I was not able to answer the objection, 
but science now can do so when it tells us that the formed earth is 
older than the formed sun, and that there must have been light 
nourishing plants before the sun was condensed. In the present 
advanced stage of science, the infidel would have started an objec- 
tion which cannot be answered if Genesis had made the sun appear 
on the first day. 



74 GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 

Sixth Day. 

Higher animals appear, carniv- It is the age of mammals in- 

orous, herbivorous, smaller mam- eluding marsupials. It culmi- 

malia, such as rats, mice, and nates in man, who is in all points 

emphatically man, who has do- a mammal, but has intelligence, 

minion over all animals. He is reason, and moral perception, as 

made in the image of God. testified by psychology — a branch 

of science as certain as geology. 

III. 

How is the Correspondence to be Ac- 
counted for? — The question arises and de- 
mands an answer, How comes it that there is 
such a correspondence between Genesis and 
Science, which has been formed in so much a 
later age ? According to the common reckon- 
ing, which can be justified, the Pentateuch 
was written by Moses 1400 years before the 
Christian era. The wildest German neologists 
are sure it could not have been written later 
than the time of Ezra, 500 years before Christ. 
Every one ackowledges that the Pentateuch 
was translated into Greek between 300 and 200 
years B. C, and that after this copies of it 
were to be found in many libraries. How, 
then, were the early Scriptures able to publish 
truths which have only been discovered by 
science in this century ; truths many and varied 
and minute, and covering a lengthened series of 
years, amounting to at least a hundred millions ? 



GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 



7$ 



There is only one answer to which reason will 
listen for an instant — the truths must have 
been disclosed to Moses as they profess by the 
immediate inspiration of God. 

Those who do not believe in the inspiration 
of the ancient record have great difficulty in 
answering the question. Thus Dr. Romanes 
admits that " the order in which the flora and 
fauna are said by the Mosaic account to have 
appeared upon the earth corresponds with that 
which the theory of evolution requires and the 
evidence of geology proves." * He is able in 
explanation only to say, that " the grand old 
legend may contain in its beautiful allegory 
more of traditional history than the present age 
is always inclined to suppose." Tradition of 
whom ? Of brutes who leave no record be- 
hind them, except their bones to geologists? 
Of men who have not got the science to hand 
down ? Haeckel seems to take pleasure in de- 
claring : " Two great and fundamental ideas, 
common also to the non-miraculous, meet us in 
the Mosaic hypothesis of creation with sur- 
prising clearness and simplicity — the idea of 
separation or differentiation, and the idea of 
progressive development or perfecting. Al- 

1 Nature, August, 1881. 



y6 GEOLOGY AND SCRIPTURE. 

though Moses looks upon the results of the 
great laws of organic development which we 
shall later point out, as the necessary conclu- 
sions of the Doctrine of Descent, as the direct 
actions of a constructing creator, yet in this 
theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a 
progressive development and differentiation of 
the originally simple matter. We can there- 
fore bestow our just and sincere admiration of 
the Jewish law-giver's grand insight into na- 
ture." z But the statement of Moses does not 
consist of an "idea," or "a grand insight," but 
of a long and detailed series of events such as 
could only have been discovered by scientific 
observation, and such as could not have been 
discovered by observation at the time of Moses. 
Even an Aristotle, a Newton, or a Cuvier, could 
not have constructed, by natural science, a cos- 
mology, such as is presented to us in Genesis, 
had they lived 1400 years before Christ. I am 
not sure that Moses had such a grand insight 
into nature as Haeckel gives him credit for, or 
even understood fully what he wrote, of which 
we are constrained to seek the producing power 
in an. inspiration from on high. 

1 Haeckel's " History of Creation," vol. i., p. 38. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE AGE OF MAN. 

FIRST EPOCH, THAT OF STRUGGLE. 

I. 

The Coming Time. — In all the geological 
ages we find in any one age the anticipation of 
the following. This may also be the case with 
the age in which we now live, the Age of Man. 
We see everywhere preparations made for fur- 
ther progress : seeds sown which have not yet 
sprung up ; embryos not yet developed ; life 
which has not yet grown to maturity. In par- 
ticular we find that in this Age of Man, man 
has not yet completed his work. 

In an age there is often more than one 
Epoch ; thus, we have the Lower and Upper 
Silurian ; in the Mesozoic, the Triassic, Juras- 
sic, and Cretaceous. So in this Human Age 
we find two very marked Epochs, that of labor 
and that of rest, that of battle and of victory. 
The evening and the morning constitute the 
seventh as they do the other days. 

77 



78 THE AGE OF MAN. 

II. 

Man's Descent. — We have to answer the 
question so often put : Did man come into the 
world by ordinary generation ? Of course, 
from the lower animals ? To this I answer 
that at first sight there is something special in 
the forthcoming of man, and this conviction is 
deepened the deeper we explore his nature, his 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual faculties, his 
reason, his conscience, his free-will, which raise 
him far above the brutes. Your one-eyed evo- 
lutionists see only one side, and not the whole 
solid truth. Man is undoubtedly an animal ; 
this of the highest, the mammalian form, the 
mammal standing upright and looking to 
heaven. But he is higher than the animal, and 
is allied to God, who made him and made all 
things. He discerns between truth and error, 
between good and evil ; he sees distant conse- 
quences, and can rise to spiritual communion 
with God. 

This is the double account of man given in 
Scripture. In Genesis L, he is higher than 
the animals, and has dominion over them ; he 
is made in the image of God. This of his 
soul. In Genesis ii., he is formed of " the 
dust of the ground." But there is a higher 



THE AGE OE MAN, ?g 

power superinduced ; God " breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life, and he became a 
living soul." We have a most inadequate view 
of the nature of man unless we look at both 
these aspects. The anatomist, the materialist, 
does not see half the man. His microscope 
may show us the soft pulpy nerves and brain, 
but cannot exhibit to us the soul with its high 
imaginings, its lofty perceptions, its sense of 
moral obligation, its glimpses of the world to 
come. 

Mr. Alfred B. Wallace, the co-discoverer 
with Darwin of universal evolution, argues that 
there is something special in man's appearance 
on the earth. It is not a development from 
what existed before ; it is a creation of some- 
thing new ; a capacity of beholding, admiring, 
and following the good, the holy. But this 
new power is not altogether an anomaly, an 
exception. It is one of a series, the highest of 
the series. We have seen that rising above 
matter there is life, there is feeling, there is in- 
telligence, there is moral discernment, and now 
there is love and law ; there is love to expand 
and law to bind the universe. If any one ask 
me if I believe man's body to have come from 
a brute, I answer that I know not. I believe 



80 THE AGE OF MAN. 

in revelation, I believe in science, but neither 
has revealed this to me ; and I restrain the 
weak curiosity which would tempt me to in- 
quire into what cannot be known. Meanwhile 
I am sure, and I assert, that man's soul is of a 
higher origin and of a nobler type. 

III. 

The Warfare. — Scientific men have now 
hit on the fit phrase, " the struggle for exist- 
ence," which so aptly characterizes our era. 
In books on natural theology, writen in the 
last century and the beginning of this, this 
world was pictured as a scene of order and 
beauty, of wisdom and benevolence. Now 
the picture has been darkened. It is seen and 
acknowledged that if there be good in our 
world, there is also evil. We have as clear 
and decided proof of the existence of the one 
as of the other, There is pain in our world, 
and this is certainly an evil ; pain to which we 
are all liable, often keen and long continued, 
lasting for hours, and days, and years, without 
the possibility of alleviation, and the sufferer 
has to cry in the evening, when shall it be 
morning, and in the morning, when shall it be 
evening. There is the deeper evil, apparently 
the source of all other evils — that of sin, of in- 



THE AGE OF MAN. 8 1 

gratitude, lust, deceit, malignity. We feel it 
in ourselves, we take guilt to ourselves, being 
convicted by our own consciences. No ex- 
planation, no history of our world is at all 
adequate to explain the facts, unless it looks at 
both these aspects, the evil and the good. In 
the very midst of our world is the tree of 
knowledge of good and evil ; as in the midst 
of the paradise restored is the tree of life. 

The history of our world is given in epit- 
ome, Gen. hi., 15: "I will put enmity be- 
tween thee and the woman, and between thy 
seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head 
and thou shalt bruise his heel." The contest 
is between the good, represented by the seed 
of the woman, — not " seeds," as of many, but 
seed, as of one, the deliverer, — and the seed of 
the serpent ; in which contest the seed of the 
woman, bitten in the heel, shall bruise the 
head of the serpent and crush the evil. This 
world is not a scene of pure good or of un- 
mixed evil : it is one of contest between the 
evil and the good ; between the seed of the 
serpent, the animal and the malignant power, 
and the seed of the woman, the pure and the 
loving power. We have an emblem of it in 
the Tree of Life, allowed for a time in the 



82 THE AGE OF MAN. 

garden of Eden, and the flaming sword burn- 
ing every way to guard it. We have it ex- 
hibited in Cain slaying his brother Abel ; " and 
wherefore slew he him ? because his own 
works were evil and his brother's righteous." 
We see it in the two families which divided 
the antediluvian world, that of Cain and that of 
Seth. Many of the Psalms, which the Church 
continues to sing, as they are in accordance 
with the experience of our hearts, are war 
songs : " Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O 
Most Mighty, and in thy majesty ride prosper- 
ously, because of truth and meekness and 
righteousness, and thy right hand shall teach 
thee terrible things." Psalms xlv., 3, 4. 
The burden of the prophets is deliverance from 
evil. " He shall see of the travail of his soul, 
and shall be satisfied." Throughout the dis- 
courses of our Lord there is reference to the 
good contending with the evil and overcoming 
it. The tares sown by the enemy grow with 
the wheat until the harvest, when the tares are 
burnt. The essence of the Gospel is to be 
found in the lost sheep brought back by the 
shepherd, in the lost money found, in the lost 
son in the embraces of his father. The war- 
fare is not only without us, the deeper struggle 



THE AGE OF MAN. 83 

is within. " The flesh lusteth against the spirit 
and the spirit against the flesh, and they are 
contrary the one to the other." The whole 
warfare is described in Romans vii., 8-25. 
" I see a law of my members warring against 
a law of my mind." " O wretched man that I 
am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death ?" "I thank God through Jesus Christ 
our Lord." The decisive battle was fought 
when Jesus suffered on the cross ; the victory 
was won when he rose from the dead and as- 
cended into heaven leading captivity captive. 

SECOND EPOCH ; THE SPIRITUAL. 
IV. 

The Redemption. — God is love ; essentially 
love. He loves every living creature as if he 
were the only one whom he loved ; he cares 
for the lilies of the field and the fowls of 
heaven, for the widows and the fatherless. I 
believe that in every one of the countless 
worlds, counted only by him who counts the 
number of the stars, there may be a sepa ate 
manifestation of the manifold wisdom of God. 
I am sure that each of the worlds has es- 
pecial marks of his love. One of the high- 
est is in that world in which we dwell, the- 



84 THE AGE OF MAN. 

world which has fallen, the world that has 
sinned, but which he redeems and restores. I 
am not sure that there is a higher, that there 
can be a higher. " When the fulness of time 
was come God sent forth his Son, made of a 
woman, made under the law to redeem them 
that were under the law, that we might receive 
the adoption of sons " (Gal. iv., 4). Here in the 
world in which we dwell the Creator has be- 
come the creature to associate himself more 
intimately with creation. " The Logos was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John i., 14). 
Though fully and altogether man, he does 
not become so by ordinary generation ; he is 
born of a virgin. There is a fixed time, a fit 
time, in his coming, and in all the events of his 
life, which cannot be delayed nor hastened. 
There are sin and suffering in our world, and 
the Son of God became man that he might 
suffer in our room and stead, and sin is 
atoned for while it is condemned. This was 
planned and contemplated from the beginning. 
He is " the lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world." (Rev. xiii., 8). I was set up from 
everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the 
earth was." "He was rejoicing in his habitable 
earth [new version], and his delights were with 



THE AGE OF MAN. 85 

the sons of men." (Prov. viii., 23, 31). Who 
is this that cometh from afar, "with dyed gar- 
ments ? " " This that is glorious in his apparel, 
travelling in the greatness of his strength ? I 
that speak in righteousness, mighty to save " 
(Is. lxiii., 1). " He was wounded for our trans- 
gressions ; he was bruised for our iniquities." 
(Is. liii., 5). He has become perfect through 
suffering (Heb. ii., 10). To perfect his love he 
suffered, that the love of benevolence might 
also become the love of sympathy ; he feels for 
us, for he has felt with us. 

V. 
Signs of Restoration. — There is certainly 
evil in our world, but there is also good. The 
scene is a checquered one of light and shadow. 
We live in a world where day and night alter- 
nate. Every man walks in light, but accom- 
panied by his own shadow, the shadow being 
sin, which is the obstruction offered to the light. 
But the creature is striving against the tendency 
to evil. If there be diseases in our world, there 
are also remedies. If there be winters in the 
succession of seasons, there are also springs 
going on to summers and harvests. If there 
be the death of the individual, there is a con- 
tinuance of the race. If there be deaths, there 



86 THE AGE OF MAN. 

are also resurrections. Nature is struggling, 
but it is in order to improvement. It is plough- 
ing and sowing, but in order to reap in due 
season. It is moving onward, but also upward. 
It is groaning, but it is to be delivered from a 
load. It is travailing, but it is for a birth. It is 
not perfect, but it is going on toward perfection. 

Looking to our earth, we find causes working 
which will certainly improve it. Education has 
reached a high state in certain countries, and 
will spread to all by missions and other agencies, 
thereby stimulating intelligence. Agriculture 
is advancing, and will destroy wild beasts, culti- 
vate wastes, and spread fertility. Commerce 
is binding the nations closer together. Human 
life is being lengthened indefinitely. " The 
child shall die a hundred years old." 

The Scriptures all along look forward to a 
better era. The seed of the woman is to bruise 
the serpent's head. In Abraham's seed all the 
nations of the earth are to be blessed. The 
Psalms commonly begin with praise, describe a 
fight, and close with a triumph. The prophets 
look forward to a light about to dawn, and 
their faces are brightened by it. " And it shall 
come to pass afterward, that I will pour out 
my spirit on all flesh " (Joel ii., 28). 



THE AGE OF MAN. 87 

VI. 

The Dispensation of the Spirit. — A new 
power is imparted, and begins to work. " The 
spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; 
He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and re- 
covering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable 
year of the Lord " (Luke iv., 18, 19), the year 
of jubilee, the year of restoration. 

The king establishes a kingdom. On leav- 
ing the earth, he leaves one to carry on the 
work. " I will send another Comforter, to abide 
with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth " 
(John xiv., 16, 17). " Thus spake he of the 
Spirit, which they that believe on him should 
receive" (John vii., 39). But while trav- 
ailing on earth, he had to say The Holy Ghost 
was not yet given, because that Jesus was not 
yet glorified (John vii., 39). In a sense, the 
Holy Ghost was given before, and had fallen 
on one after another in the Old Testament 
times, perhaps also on such men as Socrates 
(who claimed to have been guided by a dai- 
monion) in other lands. But this was an an- 
ticipation ; as we have seen that in geological 



88 THE AGE OE MAN. 

times a higher life would appear in an earlier 
than its own proper age — the mammal in the 
age of reptiles. The new power descended 
when "the day of Pentecost/' the feast of first 
fruits was " fully come" (Luke ii., i). A new 
epoch has begun. For a time there is a struggle 
between the flesh and the spirit. 

We have seen that when the new powers come 
in they act upon, and act with the old. The or- 
ganic, as the higher, employs the inorganic 
powers, which, in spite of resistance, it turns to 
its own uses. Intelligence, instinctive and ra- 
tional, directs and controls both, and morality 
would turn them all to a high end. It is thus, 
also, with the development now going on. It 
proceeds by two potencies, the natural and the 
spiritual. As I have said elsewhere : " There 
are the old powers still working, those of sense 
and understanding, of reason and conscience. 
These constitute the life which God breathed 
into man when he became a living soul. Their 
crowning part is the reason, speculative and 
moral, made after the likeness of God, and 
lying deep down in our nature, beneath the in- 
crustations covering it from the sight, but 
capable of being wakened up. Upon these 
the new and spiritual powers work. Much that 



THE AGE OF MAN. 89 

takes place in the Church is the joint result of 
the two. The inspiration of Moses, of the 
prophets, and apostles, did not destroy their 
natural character ; it merely sanctified and ele- 
vated them. The spirits of the prophets were 
subject to them. Religion does not eradicate 
the natural powers, it moulds them and directs 
them to higher ends. The man's faculties and 
temperament are not changed by his being 
converted ; if he was lively and impulsive be- 
fore, he is so still, if dull and solid, he will 
continue to be so ; but the whole elevated by 
the spiritual power." 

In all past ages there have been new powers 
added. Life seized on the mineral mass, and 
formed the plant ; sensation imparted to the 
plant made the animal ; instinct has preserved 
the life and elevated it ; intelligence has turned 
the animal into man ; morality has raised the 
intelligence to love and law. The work of the 
Spirit is not an anomaly. It is one of a series ; 
the last and the highest. It is the grandest of 
all the powers. It is an inward power, convin- 
cing, converting, sanctifying, beautifying, and 
preparing the soul for a heavenly rest, where, 
however, " they rest not day nor night " ; for 
rest consists in holy and blessed service. 



go THE AGE OF MAN. 

The history of our earth is thus one, a con- 
nected and consistent whole — a system. It is 
a struggle and a victory. Our older divines 
used to argue that death came on the lower 
animals because of the sin of Adam. Geology 
has dissipated this fancy, which has no coun- 
tenance in Scripture, and has shown us that 
death has reigned from the beginning of life 
" over them that had not sinned after the simil- 
itude of Adam's transgression, who is the 
figure of him that was to come," who has gone 
down into the grave, grappled with death, and 
conquered it. 

Our lot has been cast in the time of war. 
" Woe is me that I dwell in Mesech " — the 
scene of strife. But all the while, thanks be to 
God, who hath called me to be a soldier with 
the whole armor of God at my command, and 
sure of victory. I am but a common soldier 
in the heart of the battle, and I see but a little 
way around me. But I see in front of me the 
captain of my salvation leading, and I follow 
him. Already in anticipation I hear the shout 
of victory. " Blessing and honor and glory 
and power be unto him that sitteth upon the 
throne and unto the lamb for ever and ever. ,, 

There has been a troubled day, but " at 



THE AGE OF MAN. .91 

evening time there is light." Every mystery- 
is cleared up ; every evil is removed ; the 
last enemy is destroyed ; death is swallowed 
up in victory ; the conqueror has gone up on 
high. " Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; even 
lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the king 
of glory shall enter in." It is revealed that the 
saints shall live and reign with him " a thou- 
sand years " (Rev. xx.,4), the day standing for a 
year, and constituting a geological epoch. 

VII. 

The Close. — I have tried to unfold a pan- 
orama of our earth's history, from its com- 
mencement to its close, so far as I can see it 
by the light of science and of Scripture. It is 
a flickering light, with crossings and inter- 
ferences of rays. At times I am dazzled with 
excess of light, and at times there is a dimness 
by reason of distance, and I can scarcely dis- 
tinguish land from cloud. The several Ages 
rise like mountain ranges, one beyond the 
other, apt to be covered with clouds, but their 
outlines visible one beyond the other, with val- 
leys between. The history is one throughout, 
the evening and the morning always making 
the day. 

In the dim distance I see the scene of dark- 



92 THE AGE OF MAN. 

ness, with unending light beyond. After the 
thousand years are fulfilled, Satan — that is, the 
power of evil — must be loosed for a little while 
(Rev. xx., 3). It is a brief, it is the final, con- 
quest. " There came down fire from heaven 
and destroyed them." It is a curious and most 
noteworthy circumstance, that according to re- 
cent science if the powers in nature continue 
to operate as they now do, the earth, after an 
indefinite time, must be burned with fire. It is 
another curious circumstance also to be noted, 
that an old fisherman living on the banks of 
the Sea of Galilee saw the same fact, (2 Pet. 
iii., 7). " The heavens and the earth are re- 
served unto fire." They pass away in their 
present form. 

Our earth is now burned up. It has ful- 
filled its purpose. We may look back upon 
the scenes which it has presented : scenes for 
epics, for comedy, and for tragedy ; of heroic 
deeds, and of cowardly deeds ; of lofty pur- 
poses, and base purposes ; of joys and sorrows ; 
of bright prospects, and dark disappointments ; 
of smiles and of tears running down the furrows 
made by them ; of buoyant strength, and wast- 
ing disease ; of blooming health, and of wounds 
and blood ; of friendships and strifes ; of peace 



THE AGE OF MAN, 93 

and war ; of the plough calling forth the riches 
of the soil, and the sword drenching it with 
blood ; of happy and peaceful families, of dis- 
tracted families and desolate households ; 
There is the mother rejoicing over her new- 
born babe, and Rachel weeping for her chil- 
dren, and refusing to be comforted ; there is 
the lover's love, the wife's devotion, and the 
adulterers lust, separating forever those who 
would once have died for each other ; there is 
the patriot dying for his country, and the traitor 
betraying it to the enemy ; there are the 
groans of the dying, mingling with the shouts 
of victory, — all these falling under our observa- 
tion, narrated in history and biography, pic- 
tured in drama and in novels, and experienced 
here in our own hearts and lives. 

This is the scene presented in the First 
Epoch ; but this is not to be the Last Epoch. 
Were it so, we should feel it to be unworthy 
of God. But we have evidence that he all 
along purposed something better, and prepared 
for it. There has been a battle leading to vic- 
tory and unending peace. There has been a 
winter with its storms, but the winter is over 
and gone, and is succeeded by eternal spring. 
There has been night lighted only by stars, 



94 ' THE AGE OF MAN. 

but the evening is followed by morning, and 
the evening and morning constitute the seventh 
day. 

At the close the earth perishes. Having 
been the scene of so much sin, it is fit that it 
should be purified by fire. " The heavens 
shall pass away with a great noise, and the ele- 
ments shall melt with fervent heat, and the 
earth also, and the works that are therein shall 
be burned up." The tares and the wheat have 
grown together until the harvest, but now the 
tares are burned up and the wheat is gathered 
into the garner. The evil is separated forever, 
and all that is good remains in the day when 
God maketh up his jewels. 

I cherish the belief that each of God's innu- 
merable worlds may have its own manifestation 
of the glory of God, each star differing from 
another in glory. " There is one glory of the 
sun and another glory of the moon and another 
glory of the stars." We know what the glory 
of our world is. It may not have been equalled, 
it cannot be surpassed, by the glory of any 
other. A derangement has occurred. " By 
one man sin entered into the world, and death 
by sin." But "when sin abounded grace did 
much more abound." Sin is condemned, and 



THE AGE OF MAN. 



95 



yet the sinner is saved. The Logos becomes 
flesh and dwelt among us ; the Creator and 
Creature are brought into closest relationship. 
But the end to be accomplished by the God- 
Man's kingdom is now accomplished. " When 
all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall 
the Son also himself be subject unto him that 
put all things under him, that God may be all 
in all " (I Cor. xv., 28). I can see no farther 
into the endless light that stretches out beyond. 
My hope is to be there and live there forever ; 
then shall I know, even as also I am known. 



THE END. 



1887 
FOUNDERS' DAY 

AT 

Gambier. 



97 



FOUNDERS' DAY 



The Rev. James McCosh, D.D., LL.D., the Lecturer 
for 1887, being prevented from personal attendance on 
Founders' Day, his Lectures were read in the Church of 
the Holy Spirit, by the President of Kenyon College, on 
successive days — Thursday, November 10, and Friday, 
November 11, 1887. 



99 



FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAMBIER, 1883. 



We remember before God this day the Founders of 
these Institutions : Philander Chase, the first Bishop 
of Ohio, clarum et venerabile nomen, whose foresight, zeal, 
unwearied patience, and indomitable energy devised these 
foundations, and established them temporarily at Worth- 
ington, but permanently at Gambier ; he was the Foun- 
der of the Theological Seminary, Kenyon College, and of 
the Grammar School ; — Charles Pettit McIlvaine, 
the second Bishop of Ohio, rightly known as the second 
Founder of these Institutions, whose decision of charac- 
ter and self-devoted labors saved them at two distinct 
crises of difficulty ; he builded Bexley Hall for the use of 
the Theological Seminary, Ascension Hall for the use of 
Kenyon College, Milnor Hall for the use of the Grammar 
School, and he completed Rosse Chapel on the founda- 
tions laid by Bishop Chase. 

We remember before God this day pious and generous 
persons, contributors, whose gifts enabled the Bishops of 
Ohio to lay those foundations, and who are therefore to 
be named among the Founders. We make mention only 
of those who have departed to be with Christ, and now 
rest in Paradise. 

101 



102 FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAM BIER. 

Among the many, we name only a few whose gifts are 
noticeable because of the influence of their character and 
position : 

Henry Clay, whose introduction of Bishop Chase to 
the Admiral Lord Gambier, of England, initiated the 
movement in 1823 ; the Archbishop of Canterbury ; the 
Lord Bishops of London, Durham, St. Davids, Chester, 
Lichfield ; the Deans of Canterbury and Salisbury ; 
Lords Kenyon, Gambier, Bexley, Sir Thomas Acland ; 
Reverend Edward Bickersteth, Henry Hoare, Marriott, 
Pratt, William Wilberforce, Thomas Wiggin, Thomas 
Bates ; the Dowager Countess of Rosse, who aided 
liberally the Chapel which afterward bore her name ; 
Hannah More, who also bequeathed a Scholarship 
which bears her name ; and five hundred and thirty 
others whose names are recorded in the memorial pre- 
pared by the Rev. Dr. Bronson at the order of the 
Trustees. 

We remember before God the liberality of William 
Hogg, from whom this domain was purchased under the 
advice of Henry B. Curtis and Daniel S. Norton, with the 
consent of Henry Clay ; the grantor contributing one 
fourth of its market value. 

In 1838, John Quincy Adams, the President of the 
United States ; Mrs. Sigourney ; Arthur Tappan, who 
originated the Milnor Professorship ; St. George's 
Church, New York, which established a Scholarship ; 
Rev. Drs. Milnor, Tyng, Bedell, Sparrow, Keith, Rev. I. 



FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAMBIER. 103 

Morse, Dudley Chase, Albert Barnes, John Trimble, 
William Jay, Abbott and Amos Lawrence, Peter Stuy- 
vesant, Richard Varick, and nine hundred and ninety 
others whose names are recorded. 

These were the first Founders of these Institutions. 

Among those who aided Bishop Mcllvaine we men- 
tion before God to-day, — in 1832, Bishop White, Rev. 
Manton Eastburn and the Ascension Church, the Rev. 
Dr. Cutler and St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn, the Rev. 
Drs. Muhlenberg and Wing, Peter A. Jay, James Len- 
nox, Robert Minturn, Henry Codman, Robert Carter, 
Matthew Clarkson, Charles Hoyt, I. N. Whiting, and 
four hundred and sixty others whose names are re- 
corded. 

And in 1835, in England, Daniel Wilson, Bishop of 
Calcutta ; the Bishops of London, Winchester, Salis- 
bury, and Lichfield ; the Duchess of Kent, the Duch- 
ess of Gloucester, the Princess Augusta, the Duchess 
of Beaufort, the Earl of Carnarvon, Rev. Thomas 
Hartwell Home, Charles Brydges, John Fox, Jerram, 
Jowett, Baptist Noel, Dr. Plumtre, Charles Simeon, 
Henry Thornton, Sir Thomas Baring, Henry Roberts, 
architect, who gave the plan and working model for 
Bexley Hall ; with four hundred and eighty-three others 
whose names are recorded. 

These are the second Founders of these Institutions. 

We mention before God to-day the gifts of Bishop 
Gadsden, Bishop Johns, Colonel Pendleton, John Kil- 



104 FOUNDERS 1 DAY AT GAM BIER. 

gour, the Kinneys, Dr. Doddridge, Charles D. Betts, 
who founded a fund for the purchase of theological 
books ; Rev. C. C. Pinkney, who contributed for fit- 
ting up a Laboratory ; J. D. Wolfe, who contributed to 
found the Lorillard and Wolfe Professorships ; John 
Johns, M.D., of Baltimore, who left a valuable legacy 
to the Institutions ; Stewart Brown, William H. Aspin- 
wall, and others who contributed to the building of 
Ascension Hall ; Thomas H. Powers, Lewis S. Ashurst, 
John Bohlen and sister, and others who founded 
a Professorship in memory of the late Dr. Bedell of 
Philadelphia ; Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Lewis, who partly 
founded a Professorship, Rev. Dr. Brooke ; Rev. Messrs. 
Lounsberry and E. A. Strong, whose efforts brought 
many valuable contributions to these Institutions ; W. 
W. Corcoran, President Andrews, Rev. Alfred Blake, 
and nine hundred and forty others who are also to 
be counted among the Founders of these Institutions. 

And last, the Philanthropist, George Peabody, the 
intimate friend of Bishop Mcllvaine, who, in token of 
that friendship founded a Professorship that bears his 
name. 

We mention before God to-day, with reasons that none 
can better appreciate than this community, which mourns 
their loss, three of our citizens, recorded among the 
Founders : Rev. Marcus T. C. Wing, D.D., who, besides 
being a Professor in the Theological Seminary, was for 
thirty years financial agent and book-keeper. More than 



FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAMBIER. I05 

7,000 acres of our land was sold by him, at fair profit, 
and under his direction, $100,000 economically expended 
in buildings for these Institutions ; R. S. French, who, with 
the assistance of friends in Gambier and Mount Vernon, 
provided the full set of nine bells and the clock, and 
placed them in the tower, with power to ring the Canter- 
bury chimes : Martinbro White, who was for twenty years 
Agent and Treasurer of these Institutions, a man of sin- 
gular probity and purity, whose character and work, 
whose fidelity to his trust, whose honesty as well as 
honorable dealing during difficult times when these 
foundations were being laid, entitle him not only to a 
place in our grateful recollection, but to a place among 
the chief Founders of these Institutions. 

Among the donors who are living we mention with 
gratitude William E. Gladstone, Member of Parlia- 
ment (late Prime-Minister), Rev. Canon Carus, and 
J. Pye Smith ;— of the United States, Rev. Drs. Dyer 
and Burr, Professor Francis Wharton, A. H. Moss, M. M. 
Granger, John Gardiner ; Rev. Archibald M. Morrison, 
who founded the Griswold Professorship ; Peter Neff, Jr., 
who gave the Telescope and Transit Instrument ; the 
Rev. Drs. Muenscher and Bronson, and several hundred 
others whose names are recorded. 

The third Bishop of Ohio, with the aid of William H. 
and John Aspinwall, James M. Brown, Samuel D. Bab- 
cock, William B. Astor, and other members of the Ascen- 
sion Church of New York, builded the Church of the 



106 FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAMBIER. 

Holy Spirit for the use of all the Institutions ; through 
him Mrs. Bowler founded the Professorship which bears 
her husband's name, R. B. Bowler, who gave a philosophi- 
cal apparatus, and who, with Larz Anderson, Henry Pro- 
basco, William Proctor, and others, founded the Mcll- 
vaine Professorship ; Jay Cooke founded the Professor- 
ship which bears his father's name ; Frank E. Richmond 
founded the Hoffman Library Fund ; Stewart Brown 
builded the tower of the Church, to bear the name of his 
son, Abbott Brown. By the same Bishop and his wife 
the Organ was placed in the Church as a memorial of the 
second Bishop of the Diocese, and the Episcopal chair 
as a memorial of the great Founder; members of the 
Church in Philadelphia completed the endowment of 
the Bedell Professorship, among them chiefly William 
Welsh, John Bohlen and his sister, and Thomas H. Pow- 
ers, who also left a Fund in the hands of the Vestry of 
Christ Church, Germantown, for a perpetual supply of 
specified books for students in Bexley Hall ; and Robert 
H. Ives and his wife, -who stated that, desiring not to 
trammel the Trustees, they placed their fund in the Treas- 
ury without conditions. 

In 1875 tne Trustees determined to found a " Trustees' 
Professorship," which is partially completed. 

All these, and seventy others, are also to be counted 
among the Founders. 

We mention with gratitude the successful efforts of the 
present President of Kenyon College to complete the en- 



FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAM BIER. \OJ 

dowments, and the gifts which have resulted therefrom, 
namely, from R. B. Hayes, President of the United 
States, Peter Hadyen, Dr. I. T. Hobbs, Rev. William 
Horton, Thomas McCulloch, Samuel L. Mather, William 
J. Boardman, A. C. Armstrong, H. P. Baldwin ; from 
John W. Andrews a donation in lands for the founding 
of Scholarships in memory of his son ; from Mrs. Alfred 
Blake donations for the purpose of founding a Scholar- 
ship to bear her husband's name ; from Columbus De- 
lano the Hall which bears his name ; from Mrs. Ezra 
Bliss a Library Building, which bears the name of " Hub- 
bard Hall," in memory of her brother ; and from Henry 
B. Curtis Scholarships which from generation to genera- 
tion will foster sound learning. These also, with thirty 
others, the latest givers to our Institutions, are to be 
counted among the Founders. 

The congregation rising. 
For all these generous gifts of the living, and for the 
memory of the dead who were the Founders of these 
Institutions, we give hearty thanks to God this day ; 
ascribing the praise of their benefactions to His almighty 
grace, and the glory to His most holy Name, who is the 
God of our fathers and our God, the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost, one adorable Trinity for ever 
and ever. Amen. 

prayer for the institutions. 
O God the Holy Ghost, fountain of all wisdom, source 
of all grace, be present always, we beseech Thee, with 



108 FOUNDERS 1 DAY AT GAMBIER. 

these Institutions to direct and bless. Established in the 
faith of the Gospel, endowed for the service of divine 
truth, may they ever rest under Thy gracious benediction. 
We pray Thee to use them for the glory of Christ in His 
Church, and to make them pure fountains of heavenly 
knowledge, holy principles, and godly learning. We be- 
seech Thee to give to those who teach in them wisdom 
and patience, discreetness and zeal for God ; and to those 
who are taught, aptness to learn, docility, submission 
without servility, and manly gentleness. O Holy Spirit, 
make these Thy servants studious, truthful, pure, obedient 
to all who are in authority, and temperate in all things ; 
so that, by Thy grace, the same mind may be in them 
which was in Christ Jesus our Lord, and their character 
be formed in his holy likeness. Prosper Thou, O Lord, 
the work of our hands upon us ! Give to Thy people a 
liberal heart toward these Institutions. May the memory 
of those whose gifts have enriched us be ever precious in 
our sight, as it is blessed of God ! And may the good 
name of these Institutions be handed down from genera- 
tion to generation for the comfort of Thy Church, and 
the glory of Thy Majesty, Who art, with the Father and 
the Son, the One God whom we adore for ever and ever. 
Amen. 



FOUNDERS' DAY AT GAMBIER. 109 



THE PRAYER OF LORD BACON. 

ADAPTED FOR STUDENTS. 

To God the Father, God the Word, and God the Holy- 
Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplica- 
tions ; that He, remembering the infirmities of our minds, 
the limits of our knowledge, and the pilgrimage of this 
our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would 
please to open to us new refreshments out of the fountain 
of His goodness and wisdom. This also we humbly and 
earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice 
such as are divine ; neither that from the unlocking of the 
gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, 
any thing of incredulity or intellectual night may arise 
in our minds toward divine mysteries. But rather that 
by the cleansing of them through the study of truth, and 
the purging them from fancy and vanities by the entrance 
of wisdom, yet subject and perfectly given up to the 
Divine oracles, there may be given unto our faith the 
things that are faith's ; through Him whom truly to know 
is everlasting life ; and to whom, with Thee O Father, and 
Thee enlightening Spirit, we ascribe glory and praise world 
without end. Amen. 



^Np-Sw 








mW^^^MMi 






§m 







Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 




PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



TION 



SM 






MR 


















K 






